Purpose and Methodology of the Houston Area Survey

For the past 26 years, these countywide, random-digit-dialed, computer-assisted telephone surveys have monitored systematically the continuities and changes in demographic patterns, life experiences, attitudes, and beliefs among successive representative samples of Harris County residents. Using identical items across the years, with new questions added periodically, the annual Houston Area Survey has tracked America’s fourth largest city in the process of fundamental transformation.

No other metropolitan area in America has been the focus of a long-term study of this sort. None more clearly exemplifies the nation's ongoing economic and demographic transformations. During most of the twentieth century, Houston was essentially an Anglo-dominated, biracial Southern city, riding its location near the East Texas oil fields to continual prosperity. In May 1982, two months after the first survey was completed, the oil boom collapsed.

Houston recovered from deep recession in the 1980s to find itself squarely in the midst of a restructured economy and a demographic revolution. New economic, educational, and environmental challenges have redefined the "pro-growth" strategies required for urban prosperity in the twenty-first century. At the same time, major immigration flows have transformed this city into one of the nation's most culturally diverse metropolitan areas, at the center of the transformations that are refashioning the social and political landscape of urban America. The overall purpose of this continuing project is to measure systematically the way area residents are responding to these remarkable changes, and to make the findings of this research widely available to the general public and to research scholars everywhere.

In order to ensure that every Harris County adult living in a household with a telephone will have an equal probability of being interviewed, survey respondents are selected anually through a two-stage random-digit-dialing procedure. In each household reached by randomly generated telephone numbers, the designated respondent is selected randomly from all household members aged 18 or older. Using "back translation" and the reconciliation of discrepancies, each year's questionnaire is translated into Spanish, and bilingual interviewers are assigned to the project at all times.

In the early years, the sample sizes ranged from 412 to 550; since 1990, they have been set at around 650. Response rates -- the ratio of completed interviews to all potentially eligible phone numbers -- averaged nearly 75 percent in the 1980s and have fallen to around 40 percent more recently. Cooperation rates -- the ratio of completions to interviews plus refusals -- remained for many years at approximately 80 percent, and have also recently declined. These are nevertheless high figures for survey research, justifying continued confidence in the reliability of the data.

In 13 of the past 14 years (the exception was 1996), the basic random samples have been expanded with "oversample" surveys. Using identical random-selection procedures, and terminating after the first few questions if the respondent is not of the desired ethnicity, additional interviews have been conducted in each of these years to enlarge and equalize the annual representation of Anglo, African-American and Hispanic respondents at about 500 each. In 1995 and 2002, the research also included multi-lingual interviews with large representative samples from Houston's Asian communities, the only such surveys in the country.

As indicated on this site (All Survey Questions), the interviews record a rich array of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. They measure respondents’ perspectives on the local and national economy, on poverty programs and interethnic relationships; their beliefs about discrimination and affirmative action; their attitudes toward  immigration, education, crime, health care, taxation, and community service; their assessments of downtown development, mobility and transit, land-use controls, and environmental concerns; their views on abortion rights, homosexuality, and other aspects of the "social agenda"; their religious and political orientations, and their family structures.