CIC Conference 2009, Part One

We're at the halfway point at the Community Indicators Consortium conference. The discussions we've been having and the quality of the presentations have been pretty good -- they've offered me quite bit to think about. Let me share some high points, with the caveat that I couldn't be in all of the sessions and I've already heard I missed some great ones.

Click the link to read my notes from Wednesday morning through Thursday evening.


The conference really began on Wednesday with a selection of pre-conference workshops. I'd like to thank those who braved a three-hour session with me Wednesday morning to talk about Making a Difference with Indicators: What You Need to Know. The conversation was an expanded follow-up of the June 25 webinar, and I'm going to be collecting the material and the comments into a more formal article soon. The only point I want to emphasize is the importance of intentionality -- what results are you trying to accomplish, who is your audience, what are the expected actions you want that audience to take, how does your design cohere to your explicit theory of change -- and the importance of openness to serendipity. In other words, target your efforts, measure your outcomes, and be prepared/design for expanded uses beyond your core. We'll talk more later.

Wednesday afternoon was a meeting of the Community Indicators-Performance Measures Integration Working Group, which is a diverse group of really smart folks trying to figure out best practices and effective techniques for bringing together two similar ways of using data to measure progress. We'll be making a couple of announcements about the progress of this group at today's sessions of the conference, so I'll wait to report on that. At the conference, a Maturity Model of integration is posted for public comment, and a revised version of that model (incorporating the feedback) should be available shortly after the conference, at which point I'll have something more to share and that we can talk about.

Friday morning's opening plenary was from Richard Conlin, of the Seattle City Council and co-founder of Sustainable Seattle. Take a look at what they're doing -- it's not the same organization that once pushed sustainability onto the national agenda, and the organizational transformation would be a fascinating case study. The cutely-named B-Sustainable initiative is going through a re-launch/marketing push. There's energy and good work happening -- the efforts to reduce waste, not just increase the percentage recycled, is a great example -- and Seattle provides a number of lessons learned for anyone working on environmental sustainability. (Side note: they're also an interesting example of how difficult it is to manage the tension between being the community's trusted data source and being effective advocates for a cause. The trade-offs are real and are worth thinking about in your own organization's strategic planning processes -- where will you shine?)

Then I joined Meriko Kubota and Lidia Kemeny of Vancouver Foundation's Vital Signs in a session entitled Partnering for Progress. I shared JCCI's model for community change, as seen below (click on picture to enlarge):

I also shared how this works in practice, following one indicator through the visioning/measuring/prioritizing/planning/advocacy/evaluation processes to show how the teen birth rate was slashed, going from nearly double the national rate to (based on 2008 preliminary figures) below the national rate. Indicators serve dual functions in a powerful method for creating sustainable community improvement.

Vancouver Foundation's Vital Signs are interesting. Canada's community foundations are doing really interesting work with indicators, and Vancouver's no exception. They're the largest community foundation in Canada. They first produced a Vital Signs report in 2006, and followed that with reports in 2007 and 2008. They're not releasing a 2009 update, but are preparing a 2010 report in conjunction with the Olympics.

There are 12 key areas measured in the report, and that framework is worth a look. I especially like the categories of "Belonging and Leadership" and "Getting Started". In 2008, the report focused on the differences between community perceptions and reality, illustrating the sections with fuzzy pictures (perceptions) and then with the pictures in focus (reality). The report tried to distinguish between what was happening and what people thought was happening in Vancouver.

These three survey questions are fascinating. Vital Signs asked:

1. What is the single most important issue you would like to see addressed to improve the overall quality of life in metro Vancouver?
2. Give an example of a specific event, action, or other thing that has improved the quality of life in metro Vancouver over the past 12 months?
3. Over the last 12 months, what actions, if any, have you taken in your own life to make a positive difference in your community?

For question 2, 55 percent of respondents couldn't think of anything. For question 3, 26 percent of respondents couldn't name something they had done. Full results are here.

The report was provided as an insert in the local newspaper, and was translated into Chinese and inserted into three Chinese newspapers.

The report has changed over time. They use an online poll for “citizen graders” – and had 1070 responses in 2008, three times that of 2006. These "graders" assign letter grades to each section, which creates some controversy and pushback within the community (political leaders like to point out that Vancouver is consistently ranked as one of the top cities to live in the world, and yet the graders give it a C+.) They also conduct a more scientific sampling of the population through a telephone poll – with 854 responses in 2008.

The other major change was the geographical shift in 2007 from the city of Vancouver to Metro Vancouver, giving the report a more regional focus.

Take a look also at Youth Vital Signs, a community indicators report designed and developed by youth to reflect their perspectives and ideas about what's important and what's happening in metro Vancouver. That report also built on new uses of technology -- one input came through text messages, where a message was sent out and returned 3000 responses in one day.

The next session I attended was How Creative Partnerships Improve Indicators, with Sandra McBrayer and Paula Ingrum from The Children's Initiative in San Diego.

Sandra McBrayer began by discussing the origins of the Children's Initiative, which was born because foundations needed to figure out why their money didn't matter. They provided resources, but the underlying problems didn't seem to be improving. So they decided to bring all the stakeholders together to be part of the process of improving the lives of children, helping them all gain ownership of the problems and encouraging them to meet together often. The county had been doing a San Diego report card for years (since 1999) but it was a data document only – when you opened it up, you saw numbers and graphs but you didn't know what the report was telling you.

So they looked at report cards across the country, trying to figure out what are the best examples of report cards and why are they the best. If we called the top agencies in a community and asked them about the report card and they didn't know what it was then that report card wasn't a model we wanted to follow. Quality report cards shared several characteristics:

• They raise community awareness
• Community partnerships are key to sustainability
• Multiple funding streams are necessary
• They link what is learned to a process for change

They transferred the responsibility for the report card from the county health department to the Children's Initiative. Building partnerships is critical – not about blame, but shared responsibility. Created a Leadership and Scientific Committees-- calling it “Leadership” made it special. Scientific Committee consists of epidemiologists and biostatisticians. They used the Results Based Accountability model to select the indicators.

So look at the 2007 San Diego County Report Card on Children and Families(PDF). Each indicator includes the following – why is it important, what are the national best practices, do we have that in San Diego, if not who are the partnerships who share the responsibility to make it happen. They rethought the indicators by asking:

What is this data telling us? Do we understand it and does it make us want to do anything?

What is the area of real concern? What do we really want to know?

Is the data we want available? Where do we get it or how do we make it?

Then they put on the dashboard things they didn't have but wanted to develop the data. Some of the keys they shared for their success:

• The personal touch matters in building partnerships. They provided food at their meetings, hand-written thank you note for providing data, $5 gift cards to Starbucks.
• Focus on making change. "If you look at an indicator and can't tell what you're supposed to do about it, it's not a good indicator."
• Get the right data to focus on prevention. They looked at youth involved in alcohol-related traffic crashes. They mapped the crashes – and busted the community myth that it was simply a border/Tijuana issue. They built partnerships and relationships to be able to use DMV data to find out where the kids lived and could then focus in on who's drinking and driving. It wasn't the military -- another flawed perception. They were able to show that it was mostly white, middle-class kids in certain rural areas. They developed partnerships, including insurance companies, driver's ed instructors, schools, law enforcement, etc. Could now focus on targeting prevention activities to those kids who were most at risk.
• If the data you need doesn't exist, work to create that data. They brought a focus group together around domestic violence, and asked: What do you want to know? It wasn't the rate of domestic violence reports filed; they needed to know what children were exposed to domestic violence. Created new DV supplemental form, shared as common form among all police agencies. Missed a step – brought together police chiefs, but not the data analysts as part of the partnerships. So forms collected, but not always inputted. Now we know to build partnerships with the data side as well. If you don't forge the relationship with the people who do the work with the data, you stuff becomes the bottom of the pile – and no one ever gets to the bottom of the pile.
• Use research to determine most relevant data. School districts were touting Average Daily Attendance as a measure of student attendance -- and by this measure, they were doing well, with ADAs around 95%. However, studies showed that missing 10% of school in secondary school (18 days!) and 5% in primary (9 days) has serious academic consequences. Now they track data, by school, grade, district. (They have 42 school districts in their county!) The data showed serious problems -- as well as some places where they were doing it right and could learn from those efforts. Then Hedy Chang and MariaJose Romero in Center for Children in Poverty released their report Present, Engaged and Accounted For. (Hedy Chang was sitting near me, which was cool to have an author's work cited and have them in attendance.) The report promotes using this threshold to measure attendance.
• Never use data to sensationalize an issue. The level of data (school-specific) is internally owned. If media sensationalize an issue, it causes partners to walk away from the data. No scores on report cards – it would turn them off. We want to be better, not place blame, so we intentionally did not do that.

They closed by adding these thoughts: Right now, all of our work is based on data. How many kids does this effect, and who should be leading this effort. We have a priority list – criteria which all new projects must meet. Our role is a critical one in the community -- we don't do direct service, but we change the life of kids.

That gets us to lunchtime. Lunchtime on Thursday at the Community Indicators Consortium conference had a keynote speaker - Stephen Bezruchka, from the Departments of Health Services and Global Health, School of Public Health, at the University of Washington. He spoke about the kinds of indicators we should be measuring to reshape U.S. policy towards health, especially in terms of improving American life expectancy. I found this interview and transcript online where he covers many of the same points he did at lunch, so this should compensate for my inability to eat and take notes simultaneously.

After lunch, I heard Tad Long from NewCity Morehead speak on measuring civic engagement (I already pointed to his presentation online, so I won't add much here.) Following the same theme of Community Engagement and Mobilization, Sandra Noel and Mary-Louise Vanderlee from Niagara spoke of how they used the children's rights framework to engage their community around measurement and action. They will be releasing their work to coincide with National Child Day on November 20, so I'll hold off on describing more about the project until I can share the results.

The last session on Thursday that I attended focused on New Tools for Data Visualization. Scott Gilkeson, from State of the USA, presented on Data Visualization Fast and Cheap. His goal is to show ways to put information and data up on the web. Many Eyes, from IBM, is a few years old. You can upload data to the web and then visualize it in one of 18 data visualization opportunities. Then you can copy the code to your webpage and show the visualization there. Let's say you have downloaded data from the Center for Medical Statistics website on national health expenditures. The data has to be configured in an Excel spreadsheet to match many-eyes conventions. Then you can log in to Many Eyes (registration is required, but it's free) and paste in the data. The site will show you that it understands the data you have entered, and prompts you to enter in the title, source, tags, description, and other information about the data. Select the data visualization type and the graph appears. You can then grab the embed code and put it on your own site or blog. All of the interactivity is available on your site.

Google has also made available data visualization tools. Uploading your information into Google docs, and again arranging the spreadsheet according to Google conventions, you can insert a Gadget. This allows you to choose a chart type. After formatting the chart the way you want it, you can publish the gadget, and it will give you code that you can publish online. Again, registration is required, and it's free. This process is limited because the metadata information doesn't automatically move with the graph.

However, you can use Google's API to create your own customized code. Scott said that they've just finished an open source product based on Google gadgets that would allow you to create a full metachart. He'll be putting the information together in a clearer fashion and making the code available shortly for all Google docs/gadgets users. (It should be at the Google Code projects page shortly,under "metacharts" --I'll link directly when it's available.)

Alex Baumann from University of Massachusetts-Lowell spoke next about An Open Source Resource for Data and Indicators. Seven founding members, complex entities, came together in an Open Indicators Consortium. We wanted to get high performance/large dataset visualization tools available for people to use.

This is an agile development process – updates released regularly to members, and many will be releasing their results next week. Want to make this a good, robust open source product free for nonprofits.

Second year they'll add personalization, collaborative visual tools, integrated voicechat, flexible configuration, controlled/secure data access, and ontology/middleware to allow comparisons between OIC member and National Data Commons sites.

What followed was a series of demos, which were fun but describing them is hard so I won't. It was good stuff. It's a work in progress – will be in three levels, novice, middle, advanced, right now working on advanced and then will create novice-level later with fewer features. The product features multiple layers, different shape files, animated probing. You can click on data outliers and see it on google maps, wikipedia, etc. Mouseover and get the data and name. Right-click and you can search for data in google. Data is downloaded on demand -- they want to be able to scale to very large data sets/detailed geography. Tools right now can be embedded in a website, and are working on being able to embed a specific exploration onto a page.

Question: Will you build api's to connect to the data sources? Right now data stored in databases so you can do complex queries and scale the data-- have to load data in and tag it with metadata. Have to be able to link your data to a geography. It uses compressed shapefiles – stream in detail as you zoom in.

John Bartholomew, from GeoWise, presented on InstantAtlas: Interactive Indicator Presentation in Maps, Charts, and Tables for the Web. He began by showing some of the kinds of ways people are using interactive mapping as part of their data display/sharing efforts, and then went to demos.

Business case: more powerful open source and commerical graphic and mapping tools to help engage commitment to priority community issues. Mapping and data can sensitize policy makers to priority needs and empower local communities over local issues.

Challenge: scarce skilled resources in the public sector. Data in government is presented primarily in static formats. Restrictive Itpolicies present hurdlesto adopt new reporting media.

Samples of interactive mapping. Want to provoke discussion, not a sales pitch. Sometimes single platform is best, sometimes combination is better.

Healthmap – implementation on google map background. Easy to see, hard to quantify data.
Rhiza labs – H1N1 tracking – user-contributed data then mapped.

Heat maps – pioneered in Scandinavia – hard to allocate resources on blurred contours. Make sure visualization serves intended purpose.

Statistical relationships between indicators – how do you do it? Circles on colored backgrounds is the way we used to do it-- is it always the best?

With microsoft comes powerful flex api implementations, but require skilled developers.

WHO – using multiple tools/platforms to get information to help countries withoutsophisticated technical resources?

Good practices for mapping include:

• Ease for audience to grasp
• Intuitive interactivity
• Audience-appropriate
• Design focused on promoting valid, evidenced-based conclusions

(Those four points are critical. My two cents: DON'T FORGET WHO YOUR AUDIENCE IS! We go overboard sometimes creating stuff that intimidates and confuses rather than invites and informs.)

He went to demos, which are available on their website. One demo I would like you to check out is this one: JCCI (click on Community Snapshot to see more). That's the site I just launched last week using InstantAtlas technology.

After that session was a social/reception, then we wandered off for sushi and more conversation. All in all, a really good beginning to the conference.

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Int'l Society of Child Indicators Newsletter Released

The International Society of Child Indicators has released its Summer 2009 Newsletter. You'll want to take a look at the following:

• Their 2nd International Conference scheduled for November 3-5, 2009, at the University of Western Sydney, Australia;
• The collected papers from their first 2007 conference;
• A nice write-up of Measure DHS (Demographic and Health Surveys), a collection of free data from more than 200 surveys in 75 countries. "The strategic objective of MEASURE DHS is to improve and institutionalize the collection and use of data by host countries for program monitoring and evaluation and for policy development decisions."

You'll also be interested in this announcement:

Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago has published a report on “Improving Indicators of Child Well-Being.” The report makes a number of recommendations on new directions for child well-being indicators, including the areas of early childhood and young adult transitions. It also argues for additional indicators on childcare, poverty, and immigration. The report follows a symposium on child well-being indicators held in December 2008, attended by leading experts from universities, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations. It is available on the Chapin Hall website at http://www.chapinhall.org/research/report/improving-indicators-child-well-being.

Take a look at ISCI. Membership is available.

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Cutest Indicators Ever!

I just took a look at The 2009 Report Card on Child Well-Being for Austin/Travis County, Texas (PDF) and had to pass it along for the rest of you to take a look. It's three pages long, and it divides a series of 13 indicators of child well-being into 3 categories: Healthy Indicators, Happy Indicators, and Smart Indicators.

What I found most darling about the indicators was their method of marking progress. Instead of a stoplight scale (red-green-yellow) or up-or-down arrows or right-to-left gauges, they provided the following:

(Click to enlarge image)

I think this challenges us all to find the right way to communicate our message to our intended audience(s). Congratulations to the Capital Area United Way for a job well done!

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Data Update: Annie E. Casey Releases 2009 KIDS COUNT

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has just released the 2009 KIDS COUNT Data Book.

From their website:

Counting What Counts: Taking Results Seriously for Vulnerable Children and Families: The 20th annual KIDS COUNT Data Book profiles the well-being of America’s children on a state-by-state basis and ranks states on 10 key measures of child well-being. The Data Book essay calls for a “data revolution” that uses timely and reliable information to track the progress and improve the lives of vulnerable children.

Also go to their datacenter for another way to access the data.

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Free Access to Child Indicators Journal

Free Access to Complete Child Indicators Research Journal

Dear Researcher, Editors-in-Chief Asher Ben-Arieh & Bong Joo Lee have selected the following articles recently published in Child Indicators Research to keep you up to date with important developments on how child indicators can be used to improve the development and well-being of children.

You can read, download and save these articles as if you were a subscriber. The complete Journal is available online for free until July 31, 2009.

Editors' Choice Articles

• The Child Indicators Movement: Past, Present, and Future
• Young Children's Subjective Well-Being and Family Discontents in a Changing Cultural Context
• Developing a Monitoring System for Indicators in Middle Childhood: Identifying Measures
• Methods for Tabulating Indices of Child Well-Being and Context: An Illustration and Comparison of Performance in 13 American States
• Economic Resources, Relative Socioeconomic Position and Social Relationships: Correlates of the Happiness of Young Canadian Teens

Read the complete Journal: Click here

Enjoy reading.

Regards, Jasper de Vaal
Product Manager Human Sciences

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Child Well-Being Expert Consultation Summary from Ferran Casas

Ferran Casas provided the following summary to the ISQOLS listserve that I think many of us are interested in. Thank you very much for summarizing the conference, and special thanks to ISQOLS (the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies) for the good work they do. (If you're not a member, please check them out!)

Child Well-Being Expert Consultation

Co-organized by UNICEF IRC / OECD / European Commission

Paris 25 to 27 May 2009

During 3 days, 72 experts from 22 different countries and international organisations met to discuss the topic of indicators to assess child well-being in international perspective. Altogether we were 17 OCDE experts, 4 from UNICEF, 2 from the EC, 9 from universities from 7 different countries, 23 representing ministries or national statistics institutions, and 17 from international NGOs and other organisations.

Among these 72 experts, 4 are ISQOLS members: K. Land, F. Casas, L. Camfield and Asher Ben-Arieh.

Agenda included 9 sessions, 7 of them devoted to 1or two presentations of outstanding experts; one session of group discussions and one summing up session. Detailed agenda is available in www.oecd.org/els/social/childwellbeing  

All experts’ presentations were extremely interesting, and debates at the end of each session were very enriching, although several disagreements among participants were obvious.

According to OCDE experts, states are investing huge amounts of money on their children and there are few indicators systems appropriated to evaluate outcomes of such huge investments.

Some experts placed emphasis on the need of helping states to identify and organise data collection having a consensus they are useful for policy-making. That is related to availability of more evaluative comparable measures or indicators (versus descriptive indicators). For one Swedish expert “satisfaction” measures, though evaluative, are not “reasonable political goals”, and “aspiration levels should not interfere in the measure of children’s lives”. This same expert criticized the concept of “well-being” and proposed to use “level of living” defined as the individual command over resources… through which she can control and consciously direct her living conditions, which “naturally” includes positive indicators.

One OCDE expert underlined that many UNICEF indicators are advocacy relevant but “less policy relevant”. This expert also stated that little is known about child determinants of subjective indicators and therefore they are not including these indicators. In fact, in a forthcoming OECD publication (Enhancing Child Well-Being) a chapter devoted to a new system of indicators of Children’s Well-Being has already been included. The system focuses on both present and future outcomes for children.

Some participants pointed out that evaluation of child well-being should be not only relevant for policy-making, but also for children. Many experts insisted in the need of much more information about children’s lives in international perspective in a systematic and continued way “beyond survival”.

The concept of “subjective well-being” of children was probably the most debated and controversial. Some participants were not happy using “subjective” indicators. But what “subjectivity” of data means for different participants remained rather unclear. Many participants agreed to collect data from children and to consider children as unit of observation. How to collect that data was controversial and some insisted in how difficult is to get good quality data from younger children. Any data provided by children is “subjective”? “Subjective” child indicators refer to “subjective feelings” of children? The difference between “subjective” instruments to collect data from children and “subjectivity” of a complex social reality was pointed out. Children’s well-being indicators is a young field of research. And different meanings of “well-being” are included in it. Additionally, it was also pointed out that the perspective of different social agents involved in child well-being should be taken into account and even included in the measurement, as components of a complex reality. It was recalled that Campbell, Converse and Rodgers (1976) defined as well-being including perceptions, evaluations and aspirations of people.

Examples were given that sometimes indicators of efficiency of the school system do not correlate with satisfaction of children with the school system.

An UNICEF representative stated that most exiting indicators do not capture emerging problems of children (i.e.: children in institutions) and that we need child well-being data that allows for micro-analysis.

An interesting point that raised a debate is the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage and of child well-being. Questions were raised about intergenerational transmission of income, wealth or school results. An OECD expert presented results showing that intergenerational “mobility” may be very different when analysing income: In some countries parents’ income are extremely related to children’s (France, USA, UK, Italy), but in some others are not (Norway, Australia).

The Irish project “Giving Children a Voice” presented an innovative research method to catch what is the meaning of “well-being” among children.

Many innovative ideas and experiences were presented about measuring child well-being using “positive” indicators. One expert stated that perhaps the best predictor of children well-becoming is children’s well-being.

Ferran Casas

As always, please send me your conference summaries and notes to share with others! There are too many good conferences for any of us to attend all of them -- your impressions and learnings are needed by many.

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Webinar: DataSpeak: New Findings from the 2007 NSCH

Here's an announcement of a webinar on on children's health data you might want to attend:

DataSpeak: New Findings from the 2007 NSCH

The MCH Information Resource Center, funded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), is pleased to announce the next program in the DataSpeak Series: "New Findings from the 2007 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH).

"This will be one of the very first presentations on the results of this important survey. The NSCH, funded and directed by MCHB, administered by the National Center for Health Statistics and disseminated on the Data Resource Center website, examines the physical and emotional health of children from birth through 17 years of age. Emphasis is placed on factors that may be related to the well-being of children, including medical homes, family interactions, parental health, school experiences, and neighborhood safety.

This Web conference will provide an overview of the survey methodology, discuss potential applications of the survey as well as selected findings, and provide information about accessing National- and State-level survey data online and highlight key State-level survey results.

Details and Registration
This program will take place on Tuesday, June 2, 2009, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. ET (1pm Central, 12noon Mountain, 11am Pacific). For full program details, please visit the MCHIRC Web site at: http://www.mchb.hrsa.gov/mchirc/dataspeak/events/2009/0602/index.htm

To register for this event, please go to DataSpeak registration at:http://www.mchb.hrsa.gov/mchirc/dataspeak/register.htm

When you register, you will receive the details on how to participate in the Web conference. There is no cost to participate in this program.If you have any questions at all, please contact MCHIRC at mchirc@altarum.org , or 202-842-2000.

About the Data Resource Center
The CAHMI Data Resource Center (DRC) website is a user-friendly and interactive resource that offers users immediate access to standardized results from the NSCH and the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs datasets. The overarching goal of the DRC is to advance evidence-based program planning, evaluation, policy and advocacy. DRC users can view state-level summary profiles, generate rankings across all states, and interactively produce downloadable tables and graphs. The DRC website also provides tools and resources to help users learn about, interpret and present data findings. The website is designed to meet the needs of people with data skills of all levels - from beginning to advanced. Expert help from DRC staff is readily available by email: cahmi@ohsu.edu or phone: (503) 494-1930.

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Newly Released: 2007 National Survey of Children's Health

Here's an update I think you'll be excited about: The Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (CAHMI) is pleased to announce "point and click" online access to national- and state-level findings from the JUST RELEASED 2007 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH).

Get and compare state-level data on over 100 child health indicators on topics such as obesity, insurance, medical home, mental health, risk for developmental delays, dental health and much more! View findings by many subgroups of children, such as by household income, race/ethnicity, insurance coverage and health status.

Begin your customized data search on the online Data Resource Center website at www.childhealthdata.org.

I don't know if you're familiar with the Data Resource Center website, but it's a nice resource from the folks at CAHMI (the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative) that we introduced to you some time back. I like the tools available, as context for the specific trends in our communities.

Take a look!

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Child Indicators Research Volume Online for Free

This journal is available in its entirety free for a limited time. There's some articles in it that should be of interest to the community indicators practitioner; take a look at the piece on data challenges in developing child well-being indicators and the article called "Beyond GPA."

Here's more details about how to get access to the material in the journal:

Dear Researcher,

We are delighted to offer you FREE access to the entire issue of Child Indicators Research until May 20, 2009. Take advantage of this time-limited offer - bookmark the site, visit it throughout this period and pass the link to your colleagues.

Table of Contents:
Read, download and save these articles online as if you were a subscriber:

• Editorial
  Asher Ben-Arieh
• Creating a Longitudinal Indicator: an Exploratory Analysis of Turbulence
  Kristin Anderson Moore, Sharon Vandivere, Akemi Kinukawa & Thomson Ling
• From Rhetoric to Reality: Challenges in Using Data to Report on a National Set of Child Well-being Indicators Sinad Hanafin and Anne-Marie Brooks
• When Children are Asked About Their Well-being: Towards a Framework for Guiding Policy
  Toby Fattore, Jan Mason & Elizabeth Watson
• The Preliminary Development of the Children's Overall Satisfaction with Schooling Scale (COSSS)
  Justus J. Randolph, Marjaana Kangas & Heli Ruokamo
• Beyond GPA: Toward More Comprehensive Assessments of Students' School Experiences
  Keith J. Zullig, Thomas M. Koopman & E. Scott Huebner

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New KIDS COUNT Data Center Available

The KIDS COUNT Data Center has been redesigned and is now available for use. This replaces the former CLIKS database, and has been in the works for a little while -- we told you earlier this was coming (and had a sneak peek at the NAPC Conference in March), and now it's here!

From the site:

• The Data Center now has county-level data 4/17/2009

  Welcome to the NEW KIDS COUNT Data Center, the place to get all the information you are looking for about the kids and families living in your community. Now including the information formerly in the Community-Level Information on Kids (CLIKS) site, the KIDS COUNT Data Center has data for states, cities, counties, and school districts.

• New Education and Demographic Data Available 4/17/2009

  The education and demographic sections in Data Across States have been updated to include the 2007 American Community Survey data. Updated data for states and large cities include:
  • Children in households where the household head is a high school dropout
  • Young adults enrolled in or completed college
  • Grandchildren in the care of grandparents

Go check it out!

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Children in Immigrant Families

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has new data on children in immigrant families.

You'll want to look at the data sets and see what they tell you about your community. From their newsletter:

Children in immigrant families now represent 22 percent of all U.S. children and youth under 18 and 26 percent of all children living in poverty. Learn more about immigrant children and families in the KIDS COUNT Data Center, which offers the latest national, state, and city-level data on more than 100 measures of child well-being, including:

• Total number of children living in immigrant families in the United States
• Children in immigrant families living below the poverty threshold
• Immigrant children living in low-income working families
• Children in immigrant families in which a parent has difficulty speaking English

Visit the Data Center to create your own map, chart, or graph — or add an interactive map to your own website:

Visit the KIDS COUNT Data Center to make your own map.

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2008 KIDS COUNT Released

National trends in child well-being have improved slightly since 2000, according to the 19th annual KIDS COUNT Data Book, but these trends are not on par with the improvements that were seen at the end of the 1990s. The Data Book, released on June 12, 2008, is a national and state-by-state profile of the status of America's children. In addition to tracking 10 indicators of overall child well-being, this year's Data Book features an essay highlighting the urgent need to reform America's juvenile justice system.

• Read the 2008 Data Book essay, A Roadmap for Juvenile Justice Reform
• Learn about Casey's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, a national movement that has strengthened juvenile justice systems, made communities safer, helped give youth brighter futures, and saved tax dollars since 1992
• Download Casey's resources on juvenile justice, including research reports and practice guides

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Child Abuse and Data Transparency

A new report by First Star and the Children's Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego's School of Law calls for better data standards and more openness in reporting child abuse and child deaths in the United States.

The report, State Secrecy and Child Deaths in the U.S. (PDF), says that "The majority of U.S. states fail to release adequate information about fatal and life-threatening child abuse cases, adhering to misguided and secretive policies that place confidentiality above the welfare of children and prevent public scrutiny that would lead to systemic reforms ..."

USA Today reports that what the groups are after is "maximum transparency."

The report caught my eye, and not just for the rankings of all 50 states in compliance with data reporting standards. It reminded me that a key role we play in compiling and disseminating community indicators reports is advocating for better and more open data reporting.

I know we get involved in this work because we want to change the community, and understand that the democracy of data creates shared knowledge, better decisions, and stronger actions. But we're also in the field to make sure that good data is available for everyone, and sometimes we fall short in ensuring that potential data providers understand the importance of sharing their information with the larger community.

What has been your experience in encouraging better data? How do you measure your efforts in improving the information available for your community, above and beyond reporting the information already available?

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Geography Matters

The following is taken from the press release at http://www.everychildmatters.org/homelandinsecurity/index_geomatters.html

REPORT: “LIFE AND DEATH” DIFFERENCES IN U.S. CHILD WELL-BEING EXIST BETWEEN TOP AND BOTTOM STATES, YOUTHS UP TO THREE TIMES MORE LIKELY TO DIE BEFORE ADULTHOOD IN SOME PARTS OF U.S.

The Forgotten 2008 Campaign Issue? “Shocking” Disparities Show That “Geography Matters” for U.S. Children; AZ, SD, NV, AR, SC, TX, OK, NM, MS and LA Identified as 10 Bottom States by Key Child Well-Being Measures.

WASHINGTON, D.C.///April 2, 2008///The states of Louisiana and Vermont may be part of the same nation, but they are worlds apart when it comes to the well-being of children living within their borders.

Across the United States, where a child is born and raised can make a shockingly large difference to their chances of getting and staying healthy and then surviving to adulthood, according to a major new report released today by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Every Child Matters Education Fund (ECMEF). Entitled “Geography Matters: Child Well-Being in the States,” the ECMEF report concludes: “There exists a huge gap among states on a wide variety of child well-being indicators. The state they live in should not adversely influence the life and death of children—but it does. Such inequalities affect all Americans, rich and poor alike, and weaken both our economy and our democracy.

Children in the lowest ranking state are:

• Twice as likely to die in their first year as children in the highest ranking state.
• Three times more likely to die between the ages of one-14.
• Roughly three times more likely to die between the ages of 15-19.
• Three times more likely to be born to a teenage mother.
• Five times more likely to have mothers who received late or no prenatal care.
• Three times more likely to live in poverty.
• Five times more likely to be uninsured.
• Eight times more likely to be incarcerated.
• 13 times more likely to die from abuse and neglect.”

Based on a wide cross-section of 10 major child well-being standards, the 10 bottom states identified in the Every Child Matters Education Fund report are: Arizona (41); South Dakota (42); Nevada (43); Arkansas (44); South Carolina (45); Texas (46); Oklahoma (47); New Mexico (48); Mississippi (49); and Louisiana (50). The 10 top states for children by the same measures are: Maine (10); Washington (9); Minnesota (8); Iowa (7); Hawaii (6); New Hampshire (5); Rhode Island (4); Connecticut (3); Massachusetts (2); Vermont (1).

You can read more about it and download the report at http://www.everychildmatters.org/homelandinsecurity/index_geomatters.html

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Community-Level Child Indicators

News from Child Trends: November 28, 2007
Fall Newsletter Focuses on Community-Level Child Indicators

The Fall 2007 issue of The Child Indicator focuses on community-level child indicators. It includes articles on:

• Chapin Hall report on the value of local data for programs and services
• Mapping indicators with the Reproductive Atlas of Health
• Updated Vital Stats, Right Start, and American Community Survey websites
• Child Well-Being Index national and international reports
• An introduction to the National Infrastructure for Community Statistics website
• Recently released reports

The goal of The Child Indicator series is to communicate major developments and new resources within each sector of the child and youth indicators field to the larger community of interested users, researchers, and data developers on a regular basis.

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Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative

Many of you are probably already familiar with CAHMI, the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative. They've got a new website, www.CAHMI.org, and just sent out their Fall 2007 newsletter.

Of particular interest to those of us working with community indicators are the new features at their Data Resource Center. Here's an excerpt from the fall newsletter to bring you up to date with what's happening.

ABOUT THE DATA RESOURCE CENTER
The CAHMI Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health (http://www.childhealthdata.org/ ) supports the easy and effective use of data from the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs (NS-CSHCN) and the National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH). The user-friendly Data Resource Center (DRC) website provides direct access to national, state and regional data results from the NS-CSHCN and NSCH. Technical assistance on using data from these surveys is always available by phone or email from DRC staff. Other website resources include educational materials about the surveys and examples of how others are using the data to inform, stimulate and track improvements in child health, health care and community-based services. The DRC is supported through a cooperative agreement from the federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau.

NEW NS-CSHCN DATA
The data from the much anticipated 2005/2006 National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs are undergoing the final stages of clearance for public release. It is expected that the formal release of the national, state and regional results on the Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health website will be early December.

To receive notification of the public release of the 2005/2006 NS-CSHCN. Go to: http://www.childhealthdata.org/ and enter your email address in the box provided.

The launch of the new 2005/2006 NS-CSHCN data on the DRC will be accompanied by tools and resources to assist in interpretation and comparability of these data with the 2001 NS-CSHCN. The DRC team will be available to provide technical assistance and answer questions about the new data.

NEW DRC WEBSITE FEATURES
The DRC seeks to continually improve easy access to national and state data on child health and health care services. Several new features are in place to help users get the data and information they need:

The NEW Customizable Profiles feature lets users select numerous indicators at a time to create their own state profile. These reports can be downloaded in a ready-to-present format. This feature complements the "all states comparison" feature (compare all states on one indicator) and the interactive query tool that allows users to make multiple, iterative comparisons on indicators across two geographic areas and by population subgroups.

Resource information improvements include the addition of "Pop out" menus that allow resource information to be accessed from any page in the data query as well as a new and improved Glossary, Search tool and Frequently Asked Questions.

Tell us what you think about our new updates and share ideas for future enhancements by emailing us at cahmi@ohsu.edu .

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Focus on Social Indicators

In India, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry heard that social indicators eclipse India's economic growth. The President of the Papua New Guinea Chamber of Commerce called out the government, saying “We need to improve our social indicators … and we have to make the bulk of the community feel they are involved. Now is the time for action …” And in Nigeria, the chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission observes that Nigeria's oil wealth means little when "the country's basic social indicators place it among the 20 poorest countries in the world."

So what are these news stories telling us?

Increasingly, economic development is being seen as part of the larger picture of progress, and not the picture itself. That's one reason why we're seeing increased empasis on measuring and tracking social indicators as a key responsibility of governments and NGOs.

One such report was just released by the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The Summary of Social Indicators 2007 – An Analysis of Life Conditions of the Brazilian Population – is mainly formed by data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) and contains specific chapters on: Education, Households, Families, Marriages, Judicial Separations and Divorces, Color, Women, Elderly Persons, Teenagers and Youngsters.

While some indicators show improvement, the survey found 235 thousand children aged 10-17 who were working in the streets. The employment rate of children was higher in families headed by women: 44.1%, versus 40.3% in families headed by men. At the same time, school attendance for children aged 4-6 years increased over ten years from 53.8% to 76.0% -- a remarkable improvement, but with plenty of room for improvement.

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Child Poverty Indicators: What Do We Know?

We've been talking about measuring poverty here, here, and here. Measuring child poverty is even more difficult.

Some researchers have tried to discover better child poverty indicators through asking children for their point of view. This wasn't as helpful as they thought it might be -- these children in England ranked the lack of cell phones the key indicator of child poverty. (They may be right in some cultures -- how about the numbers of five-to-nine year olds with cell phones in Japan?)

In the United States, trying to understand what we know about child poverty indicators is hard work. Douglas Besharov's Poverty Update from September 27, 2007, is helpful in explaining what the numbers we use really mean, and why they aren't sufficient. His efforts to get behind the numbers yielded some interesting results, particularly on the racial/ethnic shifts of women employed in skilled blue-collar employment and the impact on racial disparities in child poverty.

I hadn't realized that Connecticut has mandated reducing child poverty by 50 percent by 2014, which is an interesting idea -- can you legislate away poverty? And Minnesota has launched a commission to end poverty by 2020 -- what comes out of these efforts may be incredibly useful for community work, depending on what they accomplish. Just declaring war on poverty didn't make it all go away.

Earlier this year, the United Nations adopted a new definition of child poverty, one that went beyond a family income definition. UNICEF added some thoughts that might be useful in exploring community indicators of child poverty:

Children’s well-being relies in large part on the availability and quality of basic services and an environment for play and leisure. Access to these does not always depend on family income but on the priorities and investments of the state. Lastly, income poverty assumes that all family members have an equal share of the family’s income, which is often not the case, particularly for girls. ... If poverty is understood as more than just income poverty, then responses need to address the broader picture of children’s experience of poverty.

How do you measure child poverty? Any suggestions for other communities?

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Children's Health Indicators

The Mulford Library Blog shares a nice description of the National Survey of Children’s Health and the new data set it provides. Here's what they say:

The National Survey of Children’s Health is a new survey that was conducted for the first time between January 2003 and July 2004. It provides statistics on child and adolescent health and well-being at the national and state levels. Read more about the survey by clicking here.

Results from the survey are easily accessible to the public via the NSCH Data Resource Center. This interactive data query feature allows users to customize data and make comparisons between different states and among children of different ages, race/ethnicity, gender, household income, family structure, etc.

The National Survey of Children’s Health addresses various areas, including over 60 child health indicators and content from the Healthy People 2010 goals.

So I went to this site and started to poke around. I really liked seeing data in areas that are hard to find good data for -- such as:

• Mental Health Care: % children with current emotional, developmental, or behavioral problems who received some type of mental health care during the past year
• Medical Home: % children who have a personal doctor or nurse from whom they receive family-centered, accessible, comprehensive, culturally sensitive and coordinated health care
• Early Childhood School: % children ages 3-5 who regularly attended preschool, kindergarten, Head Start or Early Start during the past month

I liked being able to see the state numbers and compare to other states or the national averages. I really liked being able to click through each number and get the raw data, confidence intervals, and then get detailed explanations of each number with a simple mouseover. Very good metadata. I really really liked then being able to look at the same question for subgroups, such as race/ethnicity, family structure, family income, sex of child, insurance type, and special health care needs status. The fact that the site will graph the numbers for you and allow you to select which kind of graph you'd like to see was icing on the cake.

So what didn't I like? It's 2003 data, and single point in time. It's state-level only. I ended up want more data, more current data, more local data, and trend lines. It may seem selfish, but the site is so well done it just left me hungrier for more.

Take a look!

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Child Indicators for Canada

Here's a press release from the Canadian Education Association:

The Well-Being of Canada's Young Children

In September 2000, the Government of Canada and provincial and territorial governments reached an agreement to improve and expand the services and programs they provide for children under 6 years of age and their families. In an effort to promote accountability, the federal government committed to report regularly to Canadians on a common set of indicators of young children’s well-being. This report develops a comprehensive portrait of child wellbeing, examining physical and emotional health, safety and security, and early development in addition to providing an overview of the families and communities in which children live.

The Well-Being of Canada's Young Children, Government of Canada Report 2006

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