An Exercise with Independence and Individualism

Close your eyes.  Think of someone influential in your life.  

Now write down who you thought about and why you thought about that person.



When you are finished, click here.




In what ways are Americans afraid of being dependent on others? 


Do you think that this is related to our value of independence and freedom? 

In what ways do you depend on other people? Does this bother you? 


Another great example of these values influencing us negatively is explored in this TED talk by Brene Brown. She speaks about vulnerability and our culture. We want to numb our feelings of vulnerability, but in doing so we also numb our feelings of connection to others and our sense of worthiness which allows us to feel love and happiness.
The feeling of individualism and independence that creates this lack of invulnerability may also detach us from feelings of gratitude that help contribute to our happiness.

Facebook Research and Data

https://research.fb.com/research-areas/

Berkley General Social Science Survey

http://sda.berkeley.edu/

SDA is a set of programs for the documentation and Web-based analysis of survey data. SDA was developed, distributed and supported by the Computer-assisted Survey Methods Program (CSM) at the University of California, Berkeley until the end of 2014. Beginning in 2015, CSM is managed and supported by the Institute for Scientific Analysis, a private, non-profit organization, under an exclusive continuing license agreement with the University of California. CSM also develops the CASES software package.

To see how it all works, test-drive SDA at our demonstration SDA Archive. Browse the documentation for a survey and get fast data analysis results. The SDA Archive includes several datasets, including the General Social Survey (GSS) and the American National Election Study (ANES). You can also look at some other archives that use SDA software.

http://sda.berkeley.edu/GSS/

We Should All Be Feminists

Here is a link to the author Chimananda Ngozi Adichie's website.




Here is a discussion guide from Lean In.

Criminal Justice Statistics

Bureau of Justice Statistics - there's some great stats here in excel files you can download:

https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2056

Sentencing Project:

https://www.sentencingproject.org/

Demographics of long prison terms:

http://apps.urban.org/features/long-prison-terms/demographics.html

Equal Justice Initiative and excessive punishments:

https://www.eji.org/mass-incarceration/excessive-punishment

The Marshall Project:

https://www.themarshallproject.org/

Illinois Youth Survey

The Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) has funded the administration of the Illinois Youth Survey (IYS) biennially since 1990.  The IYS is a self-report survey administered in school settings and is designed to gather information about a variety of health and social indicators including substance use patterns and attitudes of Illinois youth.

The administration of the IYS has two major goals, the first of which is to supply local data to schools and school districts throughout Illinois.  During state-funded survey years (e.g., 2010, 2012, etc), the survey is available to all eligible public and private schools in the state at no cost.  Each participating school is eligible to receive a report specific to their own students' responses.  These local reports provide critical information to school administrators, prevention professionals, and community members as they work to address substance abuse issues in their communities. 

The second goal of administering the IYS is to provide a scientific estimate of health and social indicators for the state of Illinois.  The scientific estimate is based on drawing a random sample to represent the state population of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders in Illinois public schools.

https://iys.cprd.illinois.edu/home

You can search the results by county or as a whole.

Qualitative Study of American Culture

Here is a set of responses from the NY Times feature called Storywall.  They profile different people and ask them what being American means to them.  Click on the link below and conduct a qualitative study of what it means to be American.  What patterns emerge?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/storywall/hyphen-nation


This can be compared to the findings in this article about what Americans think it means to be an American.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/upshot/the-great-political-divide-over-american-identity.html

Matthew Desmond's Evicted Data

The data from Princeton University:
Eviction Lab
The Eviction Lab at Princeton University has built the first nationwide database of evictions. Find out how many evictions happen in your community. Create custom maps, charts, and reports. Share facts with your neighbors and elected officials.


Evicted Book website


Evicted Teacher's Guide


Matthew Desmond's excerpt in the New Yorker.

NY Times review from Barbara Ehrenreich.

Matthew Desmond on NPR's Here and Now.

From GapMinder, income and the relationship to life expectancy.

Find your country in the interactive chart here.

Stats America from Indiana Business Research Center

http://www.statsamerica.org/radius/big.aspx

About StatsAmerica

The goal of StatsAmerica is to provide actionable data for economic developers to use in site requests, developing metrics, grant writing and strategic planning.

StatsAmerica is a service of the Indiana Business Research Center (IBRC) at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, which is ranked among the nation's top business schools. With support from the Economic Development Administration, we have developed a unique and useful set of tools and reports, as well as providing access to other EDA-funded projects.

We obtain thousands of data items from hundreds of data sets from dozens of federal and state sources, along with some commercial or private source data.  While StatsAmerica adds value to these data through easy access and functionality, we acknowledge the direct agency source of the data on every table, profile or map.

And speaking of adding value, you will see it in the form of calculations, graphs, comparisons of time or geography, time series and maps.  To ensure total accuracy, all data are verified first by analyzing the source data (we frequently report back to the source agencies about problems spotted with their data) and the resulting calculations we generate. These data are updated as they are released and arrive from the sources.

Feel free to contact us with specific questions about the data that you may have that aren’t covered through resources on our site.

About the IBRC

The IBRC is part of Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and has been monitoring socioeconomic trends as they relate to our home state, the Midwest and the nation since 1925. Its flagship publication, the Indiana Business Review, has been in continuous publication since 1926. The IBRC has won numerous national awards for its work, including Best Web Site and Best Publications from the Association for University Business and Economic Research. Nationally recognized for its founding of the State Data Center Program in the early 1970s, it has been a key participant and state partner in that program since its national inception in 1978. We are also part of the BEA User Group and other organizations that further the meaningful use of statistical data for economic and community development.