Posts in Equity
Navigating Race and Ethnicity Statistics in Census Data

In March, the Equity in Data Community of Practice learned about how to responsibly utilize census data to explore race and ethnicity. We heard from CTData’s own Cynthia Willner (Senior Research Associate) and Jason Cheung (Senior Data Analyst) who shared how race and ethnicity data is collected and how we can use it appropriately in our work. Watch the video of the session in this post.

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Equity in Action: Insights from CTData Collaborative

Each month, the Equity in Data Community of Practice meets to talk about a topic that the group has indicated is of interest to their work. Through our survey results, we know that people are eager to hear from real professionals who are actively integrating equitable principles into their everyday data work. During this session, CTData staff members share their real-world experiences, insights, and actionable strategies for weaving ethical considerations and equity into their everyday data work. Participants had the chance to talk together about what they are doing to integrate equity - to learn from one another and share lessons for the benefit of others.

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Accessing Detailed Ethnicity and Nationality Data with the Census Microdata Tool

This past summer the Equity in Data Community of Practice met to learn from the Census Bureau about how to access granular data on nationality, county of origin, and more. Many people turn to data.census.gov for data on the “standard” race and ethnicity categories. But these categories never accurately represented people from different racial groups, and this is becoming more true as the US becomes more diverse. During this meeting, Kanin Reese from the Center for Enterprise Dissemination at the Census Bureau demonstrated how we can utilize the Census Bureau’s Microdata Tool to find data about people living in our state from specific countries of origin, nationalities, languages, ethnicities, and more.

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Recent and Proposed Changes in How the Census Bureau Collects and Processes Race and Ethnicity Data

In 2020, the Census Bureau made some important changes to how they collect and process race and ethnicity data. These changes were intended to better capture the increasingly diverse racial and ethnic identities of the U.S. population, while still following the 1997 Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity. However, these changes also raise some questions about the validity of the Census Bureau’s “Two or More Races” classification in 2020, particularly for Hispanic and Latino individuals. They also complicate comparisons with race data from before 2020, making it difficult to assess change over time. In this blog post, we discuss the consequences of the Census Bureau’s recent changes to how they collect and process race and ethnicity data, as well as the proposed revisions to the OMB standards for the classification of federal data on race and ethnicity.

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A Fall Equity in Data Lineup You Don’t Want to Miss!

Data users - we are gearing up for the last quarter of 2022 with the Equity in Data Community of Practice! We have all learned a great deal together so far in 2022, and the planning team has come up with an exciting fall lineup.

If you are unfamiliar with Equity In Data Community Of Practice, we are a group of data users in Connecticut (mostly) supporting one another as we work toward integrating more equitable data practices. We focus on racial equity explicitly but not exclusively. Our group is a project of the Connecticut Data Collaborative.

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Data for the Community with the Equity in Data Community of Practice

This article, about a group of Trinity College students that took an 87-page legal document and turned it into easy-to-read graphics that the people most affected by this agreement might be able to understand and interact with, caught the attention of many. For our June session, we had guests who supported this intriguing data work talk with us about the process they used and what they learned. We hope you find this 60 minute discussion and presentation as useful as we did. And if you’d like to learn more, we hope you’ll join us at next month’s session of the Equity in Data Community of Practice.

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Want to Improve your Demographic Data Collection? This Guide Can Help!

In our Equity in Data Community of Practice, which has met almost monthly since June 2020, the topic of equitable and ethical demographic data collection (race and ethnicity, gender, ability, etc.) is one that we talk about often. It is a challenging issue for many of us. Last year, Jasmine Johnson, Program Associate for Evaluation and Learning at The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies and co-author of the report More Than Numbers Resource: A Guide Towards Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, joined us to share the lessons they learned about improving demographic data collection. You can watch the video of the presentation and read more here!

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What's ahead in 2022 for the Equity in Data Community of Practice?

The Equity in Data Community of Practice ended the year on a high note. Our final session on December 21, 2021, was filled with lively discussion, interesting ideas, and data nerds!

We discussed our key takeaways from our previous session, the Do No Harm with Data Viz session of the CTData Conference 2021 and talked about what we’d like to do as a group in 2022.

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CTData Conference Recap: How can we "Do No Harm" with our data visualizations?

CTData hosts a monthly gathering of Connecticut data users, the Equity in Data Community of Practice, who are supporting one another to identify ways we can practically integrate equitable practices into our data work. This group hosted an engaging presentation by Alice Feng and Jon Schwabish, co-authors of the report, Do No Harm with Data: Applying Equity Awareness in Data Visualization. You can watch the video, read the brief highlights, and access the links that were shared during the session in this post.

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Essential Equity: Women, Covid-19, and Rebuilding CT

Covid-19 has revealed the inequities and injustices that perpetuate the systems in Connecticut. This blog post highlights the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on women and girls (particularly, women and girls of color). We urge policymakers, government officials, philanthropists, non-profit service providers, corporations, and community members to use this information to work towards equity through relief and recovery efforts.

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