UA, JONES CENTER PROJECT ASSESSES LIFE IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - A new research initiative from the University of Arkansas and the Jones Center for Families has set out to discover how life in Northwest Arkansas measures up. The results offer some surprising insights: though most residents consider the area an excellent place to live right now, many report dissatisfaction about the region’s rapid growth.

Called the Community Report Card, the project will analyze national, state and local data to identify significant issues in Northwest Arkansas, particularly those that impact the well being of children and families. Subsequently, this analysis may be useful in the development of new policies and services to aid families and to improve quality of life in the community at large.

This effort represents one of the inaugural projects of the Family and Community Institute (FCI), a collaborative enterprise of the Jones Center for Families and the UA department of sociology. The two institutions founded FCI to provide research and expertise to local agencies for the development, implementation and evaluation of family and community-centered programs and services.

"The Community Report Card fits perfectly into the mission of the Family and Community Institute because it identifies and examines issues that directly affect Northwest Arkansas families," said Daniel Ferritor, professor of sociology and director of the FCI.

The Northwest Arkansas Community Report Card resembles similar community assessment projects across the United States. Like the FCI initiative, these projects apply social science research methods - collecting both statistical and qualitative data - to track issues and problems within a given community. But the resemblance ends there, said William Mangold, UA professor of sociology.

Most community assessment projects begin by asking local politicians and leaders what they consider to be the community’s main problems. Researchers then collect data from the community to gauge the extent of these problems and the impact they have on daily life. Once all data has been analyzed, the researchers and community leaders present the findings to the public.

"We’ve turned the process on its head," Mangold said. "We’re starting directly with the public. Then we’re taking that information to focus groups. Finally, we’ll present the results to community leaders and open a dialogue about policy change.

"That seems to us the most effective approach to a community report," he added. "It allows us to gain insight from groups throughout the entire community."

In fact, the FCI has already completed the public stage of its project. In August through October of 2000, FCI research associates conducted a telephone survey of 500 adults in Benton and Washington counties. Using computer assisted telephone interview (CATI) technology and random dialing, the researchers ensured a representative sampling of Northwest Arkansas residents.

The telephone interview consisted of 84 questions, asking participants to rate a variety of issues - from crime and safety to health, the environment, economic growth and parent-child relationships. The final question of each survey asked for additional comments. On average, each interview took 24 minutes to complete.

According to Mangold, results from the survey offered some surprising insights. "We live in an area that’s experiencing stellar growth, not just for Arkansas but within the nation. But underlying the reports of commercial success, there’s still a tone of dissatisfaction. The economy’s booming, but all is not well," Mangold said.

When asked to rate overall quality of life in Northwest Arkansas, 52.2 percent of participants rated the area an excellent place to live, with only 0.6 percent rating it a poor place to live. That result corresponded with general expectations. But the researchers found that other expectations - particularly those concerning the benefits of economic and ethnic growth in the area - may be based more on hype than on fact.

When asked to speculate what Northwest Arkansas would be like in a few years, participants split almost exactly into thirds, with some believing quality of life will be better, some believing it will be the same and the rest believing it will be worse. Researchers found a similar result when asking how residents viewed the rapid growth of the area. Of the 500 participants, 34.6 percent felt the growth was a good thing, 37.6 percents considered it a bad thing and 18.3 percent acknowledged it was both good and bad.

Although the economic boom of Northwest Arkansas has been promoted as an advantage to the area, the FCI researchers found that it had surprisingly little impact on the way individual families feel about their financial well being: 52.5 percent of the participants reported that their finances had remained unchanged over the past year. Only 35 percent reported better financial status, and 12.5 percent said their finances were worse this year than in years past.

Finally, when asked to consider the recent growth of the Hispanic population in Northwest Arkansas, 35.2 percent of participants considered this growth bad for the area, 26.6 considered it good and 20.5 believed it was both good and bad. Anxieties about increased ethnic diversity surfaced in the open-comments portion of the interview as well, Mangold said.

As a whole, the telephone survey provided a useful tool for pinpointing significant issues in the community. For the next phase of the project, Ferritor and Mangold plan to convene focus groups during the week of March 12 to explore the most volatile issues in greater depth.

Focus group participants will be drawn from a cross-section of staff and volunteers of

Northwest Arkansas non-profit human service organizations. These representatives deal with community concerns on a day-to-day basis and therefore have insight into the causes of potential problems as well as possible solutions, Mangold said.

With the completion of the focus groups, the researchers hope to hold a public forum to present their results to citizens and leaders of Northwest Arkansas.

"Our hope is that the Community Report Card will act as a map of public opinion to guide future policy decisions," Ferritor said. "We’d like to see this project continue for years to come."