Klineberg launches second survey of Houston’s Asian community

Klineberg
launches second survey of Houston’s Asian community
…………………………………………………………………

BY ELLEN CHANG
Rice News Staff

Rice University
sociology professor Stephen Klineberg is launching an expanded
survey of the Asian population in Harris County to gain
insights into the experiences, beliefs and attitudes of
this diverse community.

The 2002 survey
was kicked off at a luncheon Feb. 11 sponsored by Rice,
the United Way and Houston City Councilman Gordon Quan.
About 50 leaders from the Asian community attended.

In 1995, Klineberg
conducted the first Houston Area Asian Survey — still
the only systematic scientific survey of an entire Asian
population in a major U.S. metropolitan area.

“It is
time to replicate and expand the 1995 Houston Area Asian
Survey, to map the continuities and changes that have occurred
in the experiences and perspectives of Houston’s varied
Asian communities,” he said. “Many area Asians
continue to face challenges that Houston’s leaders
need to understand in order to better serve these communities.”

The results
from the 1995 survey provided insights into Houston’s
Asian communities and included comparisons with Anglo, African-American
and Latino residents. In the survey, nine of every 10 Asian
respondents were first-generation immigrants; 74 percent
came to this nation as adults, having grown up in their
countries of origin; and 28 percent of the interviews were
conducted in Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin or Korean.

The first survey
started with more than 36,000 randomly designated phone
numbers. Screening interviews were conducted with nearly
20,000 households. It found 609 households that contained
at least one Asian adult, and 500 interviews were completed
with a randomly selected Asian respondent from each of these
households. The new survey will entail interviews with 500
randomly selected Asian residents during March and April.
It will be conducted along with the 21st annual Houston
Area Survey as part of the “oversample surveys”
in Houston’s ethnic communities.

“We’re
all excited about it,” Quan said. “It’s important
to get this survey done.”

The new survey
will be more extensive than the previous study. It will
measure all the major demographic variables, such as residence
patterns, socioeconomic status, citizenship, knowledge of
other languages, family status and religious and political
orientations.

The survey will
replicate questions about a variety of issues that were
tracked in the past, including economic outlooks; perspectives
on poverty programs; attitudes toward immigrants; perceived
discrimination and support for affirmative action; assessments
of education, crime, taxes and government services; reported
volunteering in the Houston community; support for downtown
development; environmental concerns; and attitudes toward
family changes, abortion rights, homosexuality and other
aspects of the “social agenda.”

In addition,
the survey includes measures of “ethnic identity.”
Respondents will be asked if they think of themselves as
primarily American or primarily Asian and about their efforts
to maintain their cultural identities through participating
in the meetings of Asian organizations, making efforts to
teach younger members of their community about their ethnic
background or participating in ethnic holidays or cultural
events.

The survey also
will measure the relationships respondents perceive among
the different ethnic communities in Houston. Respondents
will be asked if they have close personal friends who are
Anglo, black, Hispanic or Asian and how often they believe
that those minorities are discriminated against in the Houston
area and how well they get along with each other.

The new survey
is funded in part by the United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast.