Eric Jolly, president and CEO of the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundations, recently found that a surprisingly high number of east metro residents are worried about their teeth.
Deferred dental care is a big trend. When it comes to choosing between paying for rent or a dental cleaning, rent tends to come first.
And housing concerns, likewise, are a major theme for 1,950 survey respondents living east of the Mississippi River, whether they be related to costs, safety or maintenance.
On the other hand, “91 percent of all respondents said this is a good place to raise children,” Jolly said. “That’s really excellent.”
On Monday, Jolly — former CEO of the Science Museum of Minnesota — had been scheduled to brief an audience at the Wilder Center in St. Paul on the second edition of the East Metro Pulse, a 24-page report on the hopes and fears of residents of Dakota, Ramsey and Washington counties.
Due to winter weather, the launch event was canceled, but the foundations have invited nonprofit partners to review the report during a set of upcoming “data parties,” which are being scheduled online at eastmetropulse.org.
‘AFFECTIVE DATA’
Through Wilder Research’s Minnesota Compass project, foundations and nonprofits have long had access to quantitative data about incomes, education rates and other demographic trends, right down to the neighborhood level.
But Jolly sees the need for another kind of statistic — “affective data” that describe widespread worries, desires and perceptions, key indicators of the major stresses and aspirations in the lives of everyday residents.
“How many people feel they need more education? Does it rise to the top of their desires? Nearly half of people said yes,” Jolly said. Traditionally, “data doesn’t get to that. Affective data does.”
The goal is to “give voice to the community to help them identify the problems they’re ready to solve and they’re most ready to address, not the problems that really matter to an analyst,” Jolly said. “When you pair it with the data from Compass, it adds a whole different value and dimension.”
KEY RESULTS
And that dimension, while more abstract than income, educational attainment or family size, can also be just as informative.
Asked about their sense of belonging, or “community connectedness,” for instance, 70 percent of respondents rated the east metro good or excellent. The ratings, however, were much lower among black respondents — 44 percent ranked their sense of belonging as fair or poor.
When asked whether they felt major institutions treated people of different races and ethnicities fairly, charitable organizations received high marks, with 84 percent of respondents saying they agreed or strongly agreed. Their approval numbers were followed by those of colleges and universities, K-12 public schools, labor unions and healthcare organizations.
Local news media ranked relatively low among 14 institutions, with 65 percent of respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing that local media were fair to everyone regardless of race. National news media ranked even lower, with an approval rating of 55 percent, tying for last with law enforcement.
In fact, a majority of African-American respondents (61 percent) felt they were either missing from local media coverage or over-represented in a negative light. On the flip side, a majority of whites (58 percent) felt they were represented fairly by local media.
Through mailed surveys, the foundations gathered more than 18,000 data points, of which 387 are represented in the report. The complete data sets are available for free.
“There were a lot of things that stood out,” said Jolly, “but some I thought were worth mentioning: the number of respondents who found themselves dealing with housing issues has increased dramatically, in St. Paul especially.”
In 2016, when the first East Metro Pulse was published, 47 percent of respondents said that they had no housing related needs or concerns. Two years later, the number had dropped to 27 percent.
“We’re seeing housing market conditions — the loss of naturally-occurring affordable housing, or NOAHs — and that’s been a real challenge,” Jolly said.
Overall, one in four respondents said they had delayed or did not receive dental care because of costs. And 44 percent of people surveyed reported that they need more or better educational skills to advance to better jobs.
On the job front, Jolly is especially optimistic. “It’s not terribly surprising, with the economy’s technological base being the fastest growing,” he said. “(But) it means it’s something we can quickly advance on.”
He points to the growth of the metro’s community college offerings and other educational opportunities.
“We know now that we’ve got dental and health issues that we have to dig a little more deeply into,” Jolly said. “We are on the right course to help people secure better jobs.”
ALREADY IN PLAY
Jolly noted that the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundations worked with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, or DEED, and the Workforce Innovation Network, or MSP-WIN, to fund a $14 million career pathways initiative.
“We’re thrilled with that,” he said.
Over the past two years, dozens of nonprofit partners have attended training on how they too can use East Metro Pulse data to steer their own missions, programming and services. Jolly points to Twin Cities Public Television, HealthPartners and even the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
“The number of public policymakers who refer to this data has grown dramatically in the last two years,” he said. “Twin Cities Public Television developed a lot of their strategic planning efforts based on what they learned.”
He sees growing interest, for instance, in helping families understand how to save up for and access higher education.
“Only one in 10 people felt that they had saved enough money for their kids to go to college,” Jolly said. “Because of that we’ve been looking at what do we have to do to create a solid pathway from birth to college opportunities.”
Visit eastmetropulse.org for more information.