My
study will focus on identity in the Hispanic/Latin community and some different
ways that data from telephone interviews can be interpreted. The role of
language in the interview process will also be investigated to see if
respondents who prefer to speak Spanish during the interview have different
responses than those who prefer to speak English.
I
am currently working on a BA in Spanish with a minor in Latin American Studies.
As part of Latin American Studies 300, Professor Leeman gave a guest lecture on
some of the statistics that the US Census has used to classify Latinos. There
is a large body of research that has analyzed ethnoracial classification in the
census but Professor Leeman stressed that most research has not taken language
and language ideologies into account. Her lecture showed how language has
historically been considered a racial characteristic and how the Hispanic
origin question implicitly references language. Dr. Leeman noted that Census
interviews are sometimes conducted in Spanish, depending on the preference of
the interviewee and she mentioned her current research investigating whether
the language of the interview has an impact on the answers. I thought that this
would be a fascinating interdisciplinary topic of investigation since it links
the Spanish language with Latin American Studies and requires an analytical and
statistical approach.
I
have accessed the interview data from the Pew Research Center and have taken
the first step to see if I can read their datasets and recreate the statistics
that they publish in their online articles. My results are similar to but not
exactly the same as theirs. I read their statistical methodology and realized
that they manipulate the data in order to correct for a number of different
statistical variables before publishing their articles. The first dataset that
I downloaded has 701 respondents and, of those 701, approximately 50%
self-identify as Mexican. The Census Bureau reports that the Mexican percentage
of Hispanics in the USA is closer to 64%. The Pew Research Center may be
increasing the weight of the Mexican responses in the survey to account for the
disproportionately low number of Mexicans in the survey.
