Pollster John Zogby expects to have the Hazleton Area Community Assessment completed by the end of June. The assessment is to analyze demographic, economic and social trends and determine how area resources can be used to deal with current change and prepare for future growth.
“We’ve just been contracted but we’re on a fast track,” Zogby said Friday evening. “We’ve identified two parts. One is to collect as much hard demographic data as we can from a wide variety of sources – U.S. census; economic development agencies; social service agencies, both in the government and private sectors; schools; police; etc. Then we’ll crunch that data.”
The mention of official census figures brings raised eyebrows in the Hazleton area, as virtually everyone believes it has wildly undercounted the local population. Zogby agrees that’s probably the case.
“It needs to be understood that census figures, especially as they relate to hard-to-reach ethnic groups, are generally woefully inadequate,” Zogby said. “And there are a lot of reasons for that.”
He said he’s had experiences with inadequate census data. In a similar project in Michigan nine years ago, he found census figures had dramatically undercounted the number of Arab Americans in several communities. And during his last involvement in a Hazleton project, the number of Hispanics was undercounted, he said.
“At the time of the first study in 1998, the census figures showed 1,200 Hispanics in Hazleton, when other data showed it was about 2,300,” Zogby said. “So this time, we’re expecting to see that number at about 7,000.”
“But we have to collect census data because we need a baseline,” Zogby added. “The usefulness in it is that it allows us to measure trends.”
Zogby said Phase Two is “to ask what are the implications of changes.”
“It’s beginning to get a stronger sense of what the real data may be and what it may mean,” Zogby added. “The mission is to determine changes, problems and how the community needs to adjust.”
But Zogby said changes, problems and implications he will look for are not centered around ethic demographics alone.
“There could be an implication on aging, on the types of work forces, available services – several areas,” he said.
“Our mandate is to find out what’s really happening” Zogby added. “Hazleton has a sophisticated and deep network of public and private agencies. People who run them are spending 24-7 doing what they need to do – serving constituency. But often that doesn’t mean digging down deep into the numbers. Sometimes answers are right in front of you but need someone from outside looking in to point them out.”
Zogby added his firm will interview community “leaders,” but he added that also meant informal networks and leaders. Her said that meant people such as those who deal with both adults and youth on a daily basis – “regular people,” in other words, as opposed to solely those who head agencies or government offices.
“For example, you might ask someone who coaches basketball, ‘What have you seen the last three or four years that we need to know about?’” Zogby said.
Zogby International has a long track of similar studies nationwide. The firm is also well known in political circles, and generally renowned as the most accurate of the major polling firms. For example, in both 2000 and 2004, Zobgy’s pre-election polls were the closest of all to the actual vote counts in both presidential elections.
Plus, Zogby has ties to Hazleton, as he has family here. And his assistant editor Karen Scott is from Frackville, so his firm is familiar with the region.
In his firm’s original response to proposals to perform the study, Zogby made several observations about Hazleton, stemming from his familiarity with the region.
“Area residents see an increase in the social sectors, are frustrated by newer residents’ inability to speak the language well, and the result is two different populations, living in one town, who on the surface, can’t seem to fit together.”
“Hazleton has recently seen an influx of a new population, and the city is plagued by characteristics of many northeastern towns: an aging population exacerbated by brain-drain and the out-migration of youth, lack of good-paying jobs, poverty, housing needs, education needs and growing health and social service needs,” the original proposal read.
“A community that can get a handle on who it is has a better sense of dealing with who it is, which in turn is very appealing to prospective developers,” he said Friday.
