Mayor’s Office of Operations: Demographic Survey
Pursuant to Local Laws 126, 127, and 128 of 2016, certain demographic data is collected voluntarily and anonymously by persons voluntarily seeking social services. This data can be used by agencies and the public to better understand the demographic makeup of client populations and to better understand and serve residents of all backgrounds and identities.
The data presented here has been collected through either electronic form or paper surveys offered at the point of application for services. These surveys are anonymous.
Each record represents an anonymized demographic profile of an individual applicant for social services, disaggregated by response option, agency, and program. Response options include information regarding ancestry, race, primary and secondary languages, English proficiency, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
Idiosyncrasies or Limitations:
Note that while the dataset contains the total number of individuals who have identified their ancestry or languages spoke, because such data is collected anonymously, there may be instances of a single individual completing multiple voluntary surveys. Additionally, the survey being both voluntary and anonymous has advantages as well as disadvantages: it increases the likelihood of full and honest answers, but since it is not connected to the individual case, it does not directly inform delivery of services to the applicant. The paper and online versions of the survey ask the same questions but free-form text is handled differently. Free-form text fields are expected to be entered in English although the form is available in several languages. Surveys are presented in 11 languages.
Paper Surveys
Are optional
Survey taker is expected to specify agency that provides service
Survey taker can skip or elect not to answer questions
Invalid/unreadable data may be entered for survey date or date may be skipped
OCRing of free-form tet fields may fail.
Analytical value of free-form text answers is unclear
Online Survey
Are optional
Agency is defaulted based on the URL
Some questions must be answered
Date of survey is automated
Columns
| Name | Socrata field name | Column name in sgr mount | Data type | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ANSWER_IS_OPTIONAL | answer_is_optional | answer_is_optional | Checkbox | Indicates an optional question; Valid on-line only. All answers are optional for the paper version. |
| DT_SUBMITTED | dt_submitted | dt_submitted | Calendar date | The date the survey was completed; The on-line version is automated. Paper survey the date can be ignored, entered incorrectly or the text may be ilegible. |
| SURVEY_INSTANCE_ID | survey_instance_id | survey_instance_id | Number | A number that links all rows of a returned survey.; Results are stored in a columnar fashion. Group by survey_instance_id to get all the Q/A pairs for a given instance of a survey. |
| ANSWER | answer | answer | Text | The survey answer; May be entered as free-form text for some questions |
| CREATE_DT | create_dt | create_dt | Calendar date | The date the survey was processed; System generated. For on-line it is the time the user clicked complete. For paper surveys it is the time that survey was loaded into a database (usually monthly). |
| SURVEY_NUMBER | survey_number | survey_number | Number | A number unique to each version of a survey; When analyzing the results, consider that rows with different survey_numbers may have different sets of questions and answers. |
| ID | id | id | Number | Primary Key |
| SURVEY_STATUS | survey_status | survey_status | Text | Indicates that on-line survey has been finalized. ; Complete or Incomplete |
| SURVEY_LANGUAGE | survey_language | survey_language | Text | The language of the survey; Both the paper and on-line version exist in 11 languages. |
| QUESTION | question | question | Text | The text of the survey question |
| DATA_SOURCE | data_source | data_source | Text | Paper or On-line |