Introduction

Over the past decade, remarkable advances in the availability and sophistication of computer technology have enabled many government and private sector organizations to develop and use timely local-level data for policy development, planning and program implementation. Where not long ago local decision-makers relied primarily on federal decennial census data, they now have access to much more current and reliable information about their community. Local governments, private civic improvement organizations, community foundations and private community-based services organizations are beginning to build and use data sets to create local indicator systems that, in turn, have become fundamental tools for tracking and understanding community viability, health and social functioning. Few people doubt the importance of this movement. Many predict this reliance on local-level information will increase as data become even more available and as we develop new techniques for analyzing, interpreting, and using it.

The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) has a keen interest in partnering with states and localities to further the availability and appropriate use of local-level data. This compendium is a useful tool for achieving that goal. This introductory section presents ASPE's objectives in supporting the development of this document and sketches out the process used in compiling information for the overall project. It also provides a brief background discussion about the community-level social indicator movement including its recent context, the types of organizations that are becoming involved in it, and the purposes for which they are using indicator information. This section concludes with details about the format for the descriptions of the highlighted indicator systems and resource organizations.

Purpose

This compendium is a resource for people in local, state and federal government agencies, private sector organizations and others who are interesting in learning more about the growing use of community-level social indicators. It is designed as a user-friendly tool that showcases an interesting and diverse selection of indicator systems and resources organizations. It is intended to facilitate information sharing among those who are doing local indicator work and to provide background information for those who are new to this rapidly evolving area of interest. By focusing attention specifically on community-based indicator systems, this publication may also increase awareness of current data resources and inform discussions of strategies for improving the availability, quality and applicability of local indicator data.

Production Process

This document was developed by a project team including the ASPE Project Officer, and staff of the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina, and Child Trends, Inc. in Washington, D.C. The effort spanned a twelve-month period beginning in September 1999. The project team cast a wide net in gathering details about a large number of systems and organizations in order to select ones included here. It relied heavily on the World Wide Web and electronic searches of health and social service journal indexes. The project team also consulted with federal agency representatives and private sector experts for their input about the most interesting systems and the principal resource organizations.

The project team used three criteria to narrow the initial list of systems: 1) the breadth of data sources used for the system; 2) methods used in compiling data for each indicator in the system; and 3) clarity of available information about the system (its structure, uses, upkeep, and so forth).

The write-ups about the systems and resource organizations that appear in later sections of this publication are based principally on information the project team developed in its initial searches, supplemented with input from each selected system's sponsoring organization. The sponsoring organizations provided extensive input to the effort, reviewing descriptive text, confirming categorizations in the overview matrixes, and providing supplemental information on data sources for indicators.

Definition of Terms

As is the case with any cutting-edge and fast evolving field such as the community-level indicators movement, practitioners use a variety of terms to describe important components of this work. The following are short definitions of three terms that are fundamental to the field:

• Social Indicator: A measure reflecting the status of the population (e.g., age range, income level, education attainment), and contextual influences (e.g., social, economic, ecological, and political influences) known to affect well-being at a particular time or over a period of time.
• Community-Level Social Indicator. A social indicator that can be collected, reported and meaningfully interpreted for geo-political units such as neighborhoods, towns or cities, metropolitan areas, or regions.
• Community-Level Social Indicator System. A compilation of community-level social indicators based on data from one or more sources such as archival, surveillance, or administrative data developed for other purposes and, in some cases, other information including data developed from surveys implemented specifically for tracking local indicators.

Context for the Current Interest in Community-Level Social Indicators

Although calls for the use of data on social conditions to inform program priorities and social goals and policies were heard as early as the 1960s, the use of social indicator data did not truly flourish until the past decade.¹

Three factors have contributed to the tremendous recent growth in the use of community-level social indicators as tools of governance and advocacy: the computer information revolution; the devolution of power from the federal to state and local governments; and a renewed emphasis on service integration.²

• Advances in Computer Technology. In recent years, computers have become increasingly powerful, less expensive, and more accessible. At the same time, accessibility to the Internet and the World Wide Web has enabled the sharing of large amounts of information. Finally, advances in database technologies have allowed us to manage information more efficiently then ever before. These factors have made it possible to organize and share social indicator data widely and at a reasonable cost, promoting the development of social indicator databases in more and more communities across the country.
• Devolution. Devolution is the transfer of control over the design and implementation of programs from higher to lower levels of government. During the 1990s there was a substantial power shift from the federal to the state levels in a number of program areas. Many states have in turn devolved control over some programs to the local and community levels. Given more control over policy and program design, and over the choice of outcomes they hope to affect, local and state governments have increasingly looked to social indicators for planning purposes.
• Renewed Emphasis on Service Coordination and Service Integration. Service providers at the local level have long been frustrated by the lack of coordination across social programs that serve the same clients. There are many causes for this lack of coordination ranging from local turf issues to "stove piping", where budget and program requirements from federal, state, and local agencies effectively limit the ability of programs to coordinate their activities. Some communities that are working to integrate services use social indicators to identify areas of overlapping responsibility, create cross-agency efforts focused on common goals, and track overall performance of the social services system.

Users and Uses of Community-Level Social Indicators

The systems featured in this compendium illustrate the diversity of organizations that are relying on local-level indicators in their work. They also highlight the many purposes for which public and private entities use indicator data. There are three major types of entities using indicators for policy and program implementation: government agencies, civic betterment organizations and service providers, and advocacy organizations. Each is described briefly below.

• Government Agencies. Individual agencies and departments have long used their own data to plan their work. With increasing pressures to be accountable for resource allocation decisions and to tackle more complex issues, local governments are increasingly finding ways to incorporate data into planning and assessment tasks. The Portland-Multnomah County Benchmarks project, described on page 65, and the Florida Department of Children and Families' Community Services Planning Center, described on page 53, have used indicator data to focus government agency planning on programs that can improve performance in benchmark areas.
• Civic Betterment Organizations and Service Providers. Nonprofit citizen groups and service providers have been instrumental in developing and using social indicator data for their own planning and to champion their utility in community-wide planning. The United Way of America, for example, is actively encouraging its local affiliate organizations to use indicator data for planning and for documenting the impact of their efforts. The Champlain Initiative described on page 49 is one example of a project that is following the United Way model. The Quality of Life Indicators Project in Jacksonville, Florida, outlined on page 33, is another good example of an indicator system project managed by a private community betterment organization.
• Advocacy Organizations. State and local-level advocacy groups are increasingly using social indicator data to identify areas of need, advocate for their improvement, and hold community leaders accountable. KIDS COUNT organizations in many states are prime examples of private organizations that are using indicators to advocate for the well being of children and youth. The national KIDS COUNT project is highlighted in the resource organizations section on page 135. California's Children, described on page 89, is another excellent example of an indicator system that is used for advocacy, as is the Status of Children in Metro Kansas City project outlined on page 61.

These organizations use indicators to help achieve an increasing number of objectives including assessing long and short-term needs, tracking progress in meeting goals, and evaluating their efforts and reflective practice. Some entities choose to restrict themselves to only one or a few objectives, while many use local indicator data for multiple purposes.

• Assessing Needs. The most common use for community-level social indicators is in examining and assessing the unique needs of a place either at a particular time or over a period of time. Most, if not all, of the systems featured here are used either directly or indirectly for assessing needs. A classic example of this is the long-standing effort of state and local health departments to implement health surveillance systems for monitoring disease outbreaks and tracking other public health issues. The Health Status Indicator Project in Erie County, Pennsylvania, highlighted on page 55, is an example of an indicator system that is used to assess health needs. The Vital Signs of the New Century Region project, described on page 75, was designed to assist in a long-term strategic planning process and is another particularly good example of a system used for needs assessment.
• Tracking Progress toward Goals. Many local government agencies, community-level service providers, and advocacy organizations monitor social indicator data to understand whether they are progressing toward their long-term goals. The Georgia Policy Council for Children's Family Connection network project, described on page 97, exemplifies such a system. The Quality of Life Indicators Project in Jacksonville, Florida, described on page 33, is another good example, as it has used its system for tracking particular community-level indicators for a number of years.
• Evaluation and Reflective Practice. Formal program evaluations rarely rely on social indicators, where experimental and quasi-experimental designs are more common.³ However, more and more programs are beginning to use social indicators as tools for management and reflective practice. Typically, these programs build logic models relating program activities to desired outcomes, and develop theories of change specifying how they expect their program activities to improve outcomes over time. The connections between activities and outcomes in these models are based to varying degrees on science, theory, and the common sense expectations of those involved. This exercise alone tends to promote a rational and carefully considered planning process and encourages agreement among the stakeholders in the process. Over time, trends in the indicators are monitored, and program activities modified in response. Data from the Cleveland Area Network for Data Organizing (CAN DO), described on page 25, have been used to support this use of social indicators by the Cleveland Community-Building Initiative.⁴

Finally, it is worth noting that there is a great deal of diversity in the central topical focus of existing community-level indicator systems. The following five areas are among the most common ones at this time.

• Public Health and Education. The public health field has long relied on indicator data for planning, resource allocation and assessment of need. A prime example is the federally organized Healthy People initiative described on page 167. The education field has also made extensive use of social indicators to track the overall and individual progress in student achievement. Nearly every indicator system featured in this compendium includes some focus on public health and education issues.
• Environment. The environment is a major topic among the organizations that are using community-level social indicator systems for planning and advocacy. Hundreds of local-level "sustainable community" projects have been developed over the past decade, many of which manage a social indicator system to support their work. The Sustainable Seattle project, outlined on page 41, is one of the oldest and best known of this group. The Livable Tucson Vision Program on page 43 is another example. And, the Redefining Progress resource organization, described on page 151 is a leader in the field of environmental-focused community indicators.
• Children, Youth and Families. Many public and private-supported community indicator projects emphasize the well being of children, youth, and families.⁵ Several projects highlighted in this compendium focus on this topic. These include: the California's Children system on page 89, the Georgia Policy Council for Children project on page 97, the Status of Children in Metro Kansas City report card on page 61, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation supported KIDS COUNT projects described on page 135. KIDS COUNT is particularly interesting in that it is a network of state-based organizations that regularly release county-level trend data on child and youth well being.
• Comprehensive Community Change Initiatives. Comprehensive community change initiatives attempt to rebuild the social and economic fabric of a community or neighborhood by implementing a holistic strategy involving a full range of resources. A core philosophical tenant of these projects is that all aspects of a community are closely inter-related, and therefore, in order to bring about lasting change, many of those inter-related components must be tackled simultaneously. A number of these initiatives have commenced over the past decade, and many of them use indicator concepts in their planning processes. The Neighborhood Facts project in Denver is one example.

Future Directions

As noted earlier, the notion of assessing and monitoring the aggregate-level of health and human services in specific communities or neighborhoods is not new. Social researchers have for decades sought to identify and measure key characteristics of small areas that distinguish them from one another with respect to health, safety, and quality of life. Communities and neighborhoods now routinely use social indicator data to identify and quantify needs, inform their planning process, and assess progress in achieving programmatic and policy goals.

The federal government has worked to support the wider development and application of community indicators through several efforts. The Resource Organizations section of this compendium describes efforts of a few federal agencies to create model indicators and provide data that communities can incorporate into local indicator systems. In addition, ASPE has supported the growth of existing indicator systems by funding states to incorporate indicators of youth and child well-being into their state and local planning processes. Finally, the development of this compendium, and a related workshop held in June 2000, have fostered communication around the current resources, benefits and challenges of indicator systems at the community level. Discussion at the workshop, which included federal agency representative and officials from agencies and organizations that manage community indicator systems, identified a range of issues to be addressed as both the technology and application of indicator data continue to evolve:

• Access to Data. Given the substantial investment required to define and compile data from various sources, communities are eager for resources that will provide them with current data on their community, in a format that can be compared to similar communities. The American Community Survey described on page 169, and the Community Health Status Indicators project described on page 163, are two important resources developed by the federal government. Some communities are also incorporating proprietary data purchased from market research firms into their indicator systems.
• Data Management. Advances in computer hardware and software and enhanced communication among computer users via the Internet have greatly facilitated communities' abilities to compile and store data across agencies and over years. The investments required are considerable, however, and the process of negotiating among entities that contribute and use data can be difficult. Support for collaborative "data warehouses" provided by the National Neighborhood Indicators Project (described on pages 159) and the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connections initiative provide important resources to communities engaging in this effort.
• Definition and Use of Community Indicators. The "art" of social indicator data -- choosing what is to be measured and how the data will be used -- is no less challenging than the "science" of data gathering and management. Many of the community indicator systems described in this compendium, particularly those developed through inclusive citizen participation, are the product of extensive discussion of community goals and priorities. Some in the field have questioned the emphasis on problem-focused indicators, turning instead toward strength-based approaches such as the Search Institute's developmental assets, described on page 153. There is also extensive debate over the appropriate use of community-level indicators to assess the efforts of programs and agencies that cannot reasonably be expected to have an impact over the entire community or issue.
• Need for Expertise. As the technology and application of community indicator systems evolve, so do the demands for skills and expertise required to develop, maintain and extend them. Many of the leaders of the indicator systems featured in this compendium have developed their skills on the job. The resource organizations highlighted in this document can help individuals and other organizations expand their capabilities. However, using technologies such as geographic information systems and assessing the applicability of indicators developed at the state or national level for local use, will call for new and different skills than those that may be currently in place.

Format For Descriptions of Featured Indicator Systems and Resource Organizations

The following pages include brief write-ups about 43 selected community-level indicator systems and private and government-supported organizations that are sources of further information about managing and using indicator data.

The write-ups about the indicator systems are in the following standard format:

Background: Information about the sponsoring organization that created and/or manages the featured indicator system, how and why the system was developed, current uses of the system, and plans for further development.

• Number and types of indicators: Categories of indicators, as defined by the sponsoring organization.
• Data sources/requirements: Overview of the types of data used in the indicator system; how data are compiled, updated, and processed; and availability of data in print or electronic formats.
• Sponsor: Organization that finances and/or manages the indicator system.
• Contact information: Name(s) and contact information for more in-depth information about the indicator system.
• Publications: Title and, in some cases, short descriptions of relevant publications about the indicator system and how to access either print or web-based copies.
• List of indicators: A chart showing individual indicators that comprise the system including information about the data sources for each indicator. A few of the write-ups describe organizations that are managing data archives, rather than indicator systems per se. The write-ups about these organizations do not include an indicator chart.

The descriptions of the featured resource organizations are also in a standard format:

• Background: Information about the resource organization, its work in the community-level indicator field, and its plans for further activities.
• Resource description: The service, publication, or data offered by the resource organization.
• Contact information: Name(s) and contact information for more in-depth information about the featured organization.
• Publications: Title and, in some cases, short descriptions of relevant publications and how to access either print or web-based reports.

Finally, Tables A and B, which are displayed on pages 11 and 13 respectively, provide an overview of the focuses of the indicator systems highlighted in this publication. Table A lists the topical areas covered by each system, and Table B displays the types of data used and the geographic focus of each one.

1. Kingsley, G.T., editor (1999). Building and Operating Neighborhood Indicators Systems Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute.

2. This section draws heavily on ideas discussed in more detail in Brown, B., and Corbett, T. (forthcoming). "Social Indicators and Public Policy in the Age of Devolution." In Trends in the Well-being of Children and Youth. Weissberg, R., Weiss, L., Reyes, O., and Walberg, H. (eds.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare League of America.

3. Social indicators have become tools of choice for some comprehensive community initiatives, where the more traditional evaluation methodologies are not appropriate. For a detailed discussion see The Aspen Institute Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families. (1998). New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives: Volume 2, Theory, Measurement, and Analysis. Karen Fullbright Anderson, Anne Kubisch, and James Connell (eds.). Washington, D.C.: The Aspen Institute.

4. For a review of this initiative, see Milligan, S., Coulton, C., York, P., and Register, R. (1998). "Implementing a Theory of Change Evaluation in the Cleveland Community-Building Initiative: A Case Study." In New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives: Volume 2, Theory, Measurement, and Analysis. Karen Fullbright Anderson, Anne Kubisch, and James Connell (eds.). Washington, D.C.: The Aspen Institute.

5. For an inventory of these projects, see Child Trends (2000) Indicators of Child, Youth, and Family Well-being: a Selected Inventory of Existing Projects. Prepared for the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Washington, D.C.: Child Trends.