Celia (Yucheng) Fan is the Data Manager for Detroit Metro Area Communities Study (DMACS), an initiative hosted at U-M's Gerald. R. Ford School of Public Policy, where she provides data management and analysis, panelist management, programming and technical support. DMACS is a University of Michigan initiative through the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy designed to regularly survey a broad, representative group of Detroit residents about their communities, including their expectations, perceptions, priorities, and aspirations.
What prompted you to conduct your research in this area? And what prompted you to start doing initial data releases through Deep Blue Data?
DMACS Mission: "To engage residents and stakeholders in informing the city’s future by involving stakeholders in the prioritization, collection and dissemination of public opinion information that supports more meaningful and effective community development investments in and around Detroit."
DMACS is a reliable source for timely and relevant public opinion data in a changing Detroit. Since 2016, DMACS has conducted citywide surveys on topics including crime and policing, neighborhood perceptions, government priorities and attitudes, housing and blight, entrepreneurship, and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, among others. A lot of our survey questions are closely relevant to the current events that influence Detroit residents. Making our data available to the public in a timely manner can support policy that serves the needs and aspirations of Detroiters. Compared to other data deposit platforms, Deep Blue offers a greater advantage in terms of productivity, time efficiency and costs (shoutout to Rachel who is always prompt and detailed in responding to my questions!). Thus, we are now doing initial data releases of closed-ended responses through Deep Blue Data, as well as continuing our final data releases with de-identified open responses via ICPSR. (See links below).
For those not familiar with your field, what is the one thing you think is most important/interesting to know/unique about your work or your findings?
DMACS offers what is arguably the highest quality data on Detroiters’ public opinions available today. One of the most unique elements of DMACS is that we have large samples and we are a panel study. This means that we interact with the same respondents over time. Once someone joins our panel, they are invited to join the subsequent surveys. This helps researchers to understand how the opinions of the same individuals change over time, and allows researchers to unmask the causal impact of specific events on their opinions and experiences.
How do you hope your data might be encountered or reused out in the world?
DMACS Vision: "Detroit leaders and residents can easily access and use scientifically sound public opinion data as they make policy, programmatic and investment decisions that affect their communities and the City of Detroit."
DMACS obtains high-quality, representative feedback from the public that empowers researchers who seek to promote awareness of Detroiters’ opinions, inform policymakers’ actions, and provide a mechanism for holding elected officials and policymakers accountable to the publics they serve.
What is one thing you learned during the process of preparing your data for deposit or sharing?
As the DMACS team member who is most familiar with our datasets, preparing data for sharing prompts me to view our datasets from an outside perspective. It allows me to think about whether there are more steps to take to make our data more user-friendly and ensure our data is well-documented, including clear descriptions of variables and data collection methods.
Why do you think sharing data is important?
DMACS values collaborations. By making our data available to the public, it fosters experts from different fields or regions to work together, combining knowledge and resources to amplify the voices of Detroiters who are often not well represented. We seek to help families thrive by listening to their visions of how Detroit should move forward and amplifying those perspectives among decision makers.