Exploring Communities of Color Electoral Participation: Secondary Analysis and Data Sharing

We propose a session or part of a panel that addresses use of secondary data to examine voting behavior of underrepresented populations. In this session, we will focus on election studies in our collection and compare the results over time and use of variables that seek to measure the same or similar electoral behaviors. The behaviors include: electoral participation, racial interests/policy preferences, partisanship, collective interests, and values among various racial and ethnic groups. In addition, we will explore briefly the use of various sampling methodologies and how different approaches affect the resulting data and interpretations of voting behavior. The studies we will use include: 1) the 2004 National Politics Survey, 2) the 2004 National Asian-American Survey, 3) the 2006 Latino National Survey, and 4) the 2006 Latino National Survey – New England, 2006. As part of this session, we will introduce session attendees to the sample characteristics and compare variables tools that are present on the ICPSR and RCMD websites. Our goal is to demonstrate to NCOBPS participants how secondary data from RCMD can be used in the aggregate to answer questions beyond the scope of any one study in our holdings. Other publically accessible data sets will be identified. The Resource Center for Minority Data (RCMD) is housed at ICPSR. The data archive focuses on the distribution and archiving of the social science data focusing on underrepresented or minority populations.