Minnesota's Diverse Communities Survey: What? Why? And how?
Photos by Evan Frost, Christine T. Nguyen, Nicole Neri, Kathryn Styer Martinez and Courtney Perry for MPR News
Minnesota’s Diverse Communities Survey: What? Why? And how?
by CRAIG HELMSTETTER | Aug. 11, 2021
Today we are proud to launch the first in a series of reports based on a major and very unique statewide survey of Minnesotans.
In some ways, Minnesota’s Diverse Communities is a public opinion survey like many others. People answered questions via the internet or telephone about some of the most important issues facing the state. In other ways, however, this is a survey like none other.
“Thank you for offering the opportunity to participate in a survey to share insight on the state of affairs in Minnesota. Please follow-up on our input towards a useful purpose, hopefully to inform decision-making for a better quality of life for all Minnesotans.”
At the core of this survey is our effort to provide as scientifically representative as possible a picture of the opinions and experiences of as many of Minnesota’s racial and ethnic groups as possible. The survey also aims to elevate the collective voices of communities that are typically underrepresented, sometimes stereotyped, and often not well understood by those who do not share their backgrounds.
Unlike nearly all surveys of Minnesotans, this one includes strong representation of the state’s Black, Indigenous, Latinx and Asian populations, including a large sample of the state’s single largest Asian ethnic group, Hmong Minnesotans.
Explore our interactive visualization of where respondents live by race and ethnicity
Note that while we are proud of accomplishing this level of representation, we would love for this survey to inspire funding for additional research (by us or others) with many other ethnic groups, including representative samples of Asian Indians, Somalis or any of the Native nations located within the state’s boundaries, just to name a few.
Over the next several weeks, in conjunction with partners at Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) News and elsewhere, we will be diving into the many topics covered by the survey, including policing and the courts, COVID-19, feelings of inclusion (or lack thereof), experiences with discrimination (or lack thereof), news media consumption, trust in institutions, public K-12 education, and experiences with arts and cultural opportunities.
Why did we do it?
The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25, 2020 sparked a major racial reckoning in the state, the nation and around the world. If it wasn’t obvious before that day that Minnesotans needed to better understand one another across lines of race and ethnicity, it certainly was obvious after.
We had dreamed of pursuing this project as soon as we finished our last major statewide survey with MPR. That project, the 2017 Ground Level Survey, focused on better understanding the so-called rural-urban divide that was vexing many at the time.
While the results of that survey did hint at some interesting differences between racial and ethnic groups in the state (such as an especially pronounced level of hopefulness among Black Minnesotans), the 2017 survey was not designed to zero in on the experiences of different racial and ethnic groups.
“It was an important survey to bring awareness to the subject of race and how it affects individuals who are of minority groups. I think it is important to share the results of this study to different communities, specifically white/middle-class communities who might not have the same experiences or education of the matter.”
The Minnesota’s Diverse Communities survey builds directly on some of the work being done by our broader organization. In 2019, MPR came together with several partners (including the Minnesota Humanities Center, KMOJ, Pillsbury United Communities, ThreeSixty Journalism at the University of St. Thomas, and Hamline University) to form a learning collaborative and ultimately host the Truth and Transformation conference, which centered around improving the way BIPOC communities are covered by local news media.
More recently, under the leadership of Director of Community Impact and Engagement Ka Vang, MPR convened a series of listening sessions with Indigenous and communities of color throughout the state. Some of what we have learned through these conversations directly informed the questions that we included in the survey.
Minnesota is rapidly becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. We hope that the results of this survey will help Minnesotans better understand and appreciate one another. We also know, however, that surveys are only one method of learning about a community. Therefore, we hope that the results serve as a catalyst for additional research, improved reporting, and both broader and deeper public dialogue about the racial and ethnic issues confronting the state.
How was it done?
This survey is unique because it was not easy to do. To try and get a sample that is as representative as possible of any demographic group means that we couldn’t simply show up to a large church, mosque or community center and talk to the people we find there or post a survey online and encourage anyone and everyone to fill it out. Instead, we had to work with experts to include people distributed throughout the state, and people not necessarily affiliated with a specific club or group that might tend to foster or attract a set of opinions that are not representative of the broader population.
“There are many things that can be said but change would be better than talk. I have too much to say about every topic you presented”
To pull this off we retained SSRS, a survey research firm with qualifications in conducting data collection for important local and national work, including the Minnesota Department of Health’s Health Access Survey and the national Discrimination in America survey for Harvard University, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and National Public Radio.
SSRS designed a multi-modal approach to gather as representative a sample as possible within our time and budget constraints. The approach, detailed in the methods report for this survey, consisted of both web-based and telephone interviews.
A picture of the letter sent to potential respondents encouraging them to participate in the survey. Small incentives like the $1.25 included with the letter have been shown to be a cost-effective way to meaningfully increase survey participation.
Eighty percent of the interviews resulted from address-based sampling. Letters encouraging people to fill out a web-based survey were sent to addresses in areas known to have high concentrations of BIPOC populations, as well as to specific addresses throughout the state expected to have BIPOC residents based on either surname or computer modeling predictions.
Respondents were also identified through SSRS’s ongoing national opinion panels and omnibus surveys. These surveys include demographic information about the Minnesotans who participate, which allowed SSRS to efficiently identify respondents for an adequate sample of both BIPOC and White respondents for this survey.
We designed the questionnaire based on insights gleaned from the listening sessions mentioned above. Several listening session participants served as pre-testers, helping us improve an early version of the survey. We also received ideas from internal partners in the MPR newsroom, as well as other surveys including Blandin Foundation’s Rural Pulse, the Saint Paul Foundation’s East Metro Pulse and Wilder Research’s Speaking for Ourselves survey of immigrant communities in Minnesota.
As you might imagine, the project required resources. We are fortunate to have obtained major funding from the State of Minnesota Legacy Amendment’s Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund, as well as support from the Bush Foundation and the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation. Additionally, the Blandin Foundation and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation provided funding for the listening sessions that were so instructive to the creation of the survey.
“Minnesota’s Asian American community is very diverse and cannot be considered one monolithic group. There are differences in culture, religion, and political beliefs. For example, even among South Asians in Minnesota there is a vast difference between South Asians from North India or South India and between immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Each group shares similarities in food and culture but also are very different in terms of religion and political beliefs.”
We look forward to reporting results from the Minnesota’s Diverse Communities survey over the next several weeks, and especially look forward to the dialogue that we hope it inspires. To stay up to date on the latest findings please follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We also encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter and to send us your thoughts using the form below.