Geography Matters

The Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) is a great resource for staying up on the latest trends in economic development research. One of their 2007 working papers, Using the Global Positioning System (GPS) in
Household Surveys for Better Economics
and Better Policy written by John Gibson and David McKenzie, talks about different strategies for using geographic data in the service of better statistical analysis and better programs. Their focus is on the developing world but they do mention that, in the developed world, implementing these strategies can be even easier, given the existence of large databases that map addresses to geographic coordinates. Adapting their conclusions to the context of this country, one gets a sense of the possibilities that emerge from integrating geographic data into our needs assessments and evaluations.

Needs Assessments

Gibson and McKenzie point out that a household's geographic location determines how easy or hard it is for them to access certain services. The obvious point of inquiry is to look at how a person's geographic location enables them to access social services. Databases of businesses locations let us see how easy it is for a person to access a bank (as opposed to a check-cashing location - see the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and Citibank's report written by Edmund Kashadourian and Syldy Tom, The Unbanked Problem in Los Angeles, for a great geographic/statistical analysis of this subject) or grocery store (as opposed to a mini mart - well-documented in the LA Times, including in this piece). Now, more than ever before, we have the data to integrate these kinds of questions into our needs assessments.

Evaluations

Geographic data can also help us in our evaluations. As mentioned in a previous post, one of the major challenges in doing evaluations is finding an appropriate control group. Gibson and McKenzie point out that geography makes this substantially easier given that "near-by places are more likely to share community characteristics, such as culture, trust, and government ability." Looking at data from a person's own census tract or block has the potential to provide a natural point of comparison because of these shared characteristics.

The availability of geographic data gives analysts in the social service sector a whole new set of tools to tease out community needs and organizational outcomes. It's always been an important part of the data analysis that we do at Idealistics (for example in our Community Resource system reports an example of which is available here) and we look forward to incorporating new forms of data and new ideas into the work that we do.