Allocation of $20+ Million CARES Act Fund
Economic Equity Project
Background
The Economic Equity ‘in their own voices’ research project is designed to build understanding of the unique economic experiences of Long Beach communities hardest-hit by COVID-19. Participants in this research agreed to share their stories, including images, video, survey results, and recordings publically. This research will provide a basis for further outreach and recommendations to support and build economic resilience.
More specifically, an ethnographic study was conducted to understand how Long Beach City can best allocate its $20+ Million CARES ACT funds by interviewing underrepresented communities to understand the needs and pain points of community members.
Team
Long Beach City Government Officials, Non-profit organizations, Project Director, 4 Researchers total
Role
Human Factors Research Manager. I oversaw the research project for the team from the recruiting phase of research to the delivery of the slide deck.
Process
My approach for the completion of the project:
Create, organize, and train team members on the overall research process from scheduling participants to interviewing participants to data synthesis
Scheduled and Interviewed community members from Khmer Girls in Action, Long Beach Economic Inclusion, Rising Scholars CSULB, and Ronnie’s House
Using direct quotes and information, themes were constructed to highlight main participant concerns
Co-created presentation report and iterated on with feedback from stakeholder
Recruitment Process
Long Beach City partnered up with non-profit organizations that already had built and trusted connections within the Long Beach community. It was important to establish trust within the underprivileged communities in order for us to recruit more effectively from the community for us to understand how we can best support them. Taking into account the various organization groups, I divided up the recruitment effort by taking into account which researcher would connect and resonate more with each non-profit group.
Scheduling Challenge
There was a challenge of how to efficiently schedule all of our participants taking into account how each of our schedules differed. After searching various tools for their integration with Google Calendar, I discovered that Calendly was the best tool that would allow us to streamline the participant onboarding process. Calendly is able to work with Google calendars and checks time conflicts with each member’s existing schedules and allows for each of our participants to schedule and reschedule interview sessions with our team.
Creating the Test Script
I created a study script based on questions that both Long Beach City and the non-profit organizations would like to understand about the community. A semi-structured interview methodology was selected due to us wanting an in-depth understanding of the pain points of community members and for us to ask follow-up questions as needed throughout the sessions. Additionally, I reviewed the test script with each researcher to ensure consistency in interviewing our participants, since not each person had a research background I also instilled that there are no right or wrong responses to our questions and for participants to only share what they are comfortable sharing with us.
Interviewing Participants
Interviews are conducted where two researchers are present, where there is one interviewer and one notetaker. As the main lead for the study, I make sure that Zoom links are set to record to the cloud to prevent any recording issues that may occur from drops in internet connection.
Interview Transcription Cleaning
After all interviews are conducted, the team checked transcribed files to their respective recordings, cleaned files as needed, and important/relevant quotes are highlighted. Quotes are highlighted to indicate what quotes will be used in the edited videos created. Recordings were also edited to create Medley (short clips that display important content). The videos were edited by the team using Camtasia and/or Adobe Premier Pro.
Result Organization
After videos were created, personas were created from each individual participant’s data (e.g. Andy’s data is used to create a Persona for Andy, etc.). Participant data were organized into various groups.
Participant category groups:
Arts
Black and BIPOC
Cambodian
Latinx
Re-entry
Each category group consisted of about 5 Personas and videos along with a Medley video (each category has a Medley video; e.g. Arts group has a Medley composed of clips of content from the Arts participant pool).
Consistent Themes in Data
From the organized data existing themes were found from participant responses. After all data is organized and the themes were defined, a presentation was created for Long Beach City.
Metrics gathered from the study to measure amount of data gathered and synthesized
Participants Data Organized
Findings were organized into different groups: LatinX; Cambodian; Black, Indigenous, & People of Color; Re-entry; and Arts was added as an addition later on. Personas were created for individuals for the groups and videos were also edited to show participant data to stakeholders.
Alongside my project director, Heather Barker, a presentation was created to present the results of the study to participant organizations and Long Beach city officials. From the data used, the city and organization can make value cases for more funding and gain more insight into effectively allocating the CARES ACT funds. There also have been new jobs created within the city to help bring more equity to Long Beach Residents and more focused funding that are tailored to the community needs (e.g. funding for youth programs, etc.)
Note: Some slides were removed to maintain participant confidentiality.