Measuring Civic Health
Civic Health Index (CHI)
For nearly twenty years, the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) has led the effort to measure America’s civic health through its signature Civic Health Index (CHI). What began as an effort to combine existing data and surveys from government and private sources has evolved into a long term partnership with AmeriCorps to leverage the Census data from the current population survey to consistently measure how Americans practice civic engagement.
NCoC has released 99 reports that provide policymakers, advocates, and the public with critical insights into civic strengths and weaknesses—across geography, demographics, and time. These findings, developed in collaboration with government agencies, nonprofits, academic researchers, and community foundations, have sparked public conversations and shaped policies, investments, and programs that promote more meaningful civic engagement. View all publications.
Pathways to Prosperity (P2P)
The Pathways to Prosperity series provides the most up-to-date data on severe weather impacts, mitigation and adaptation efforts, and opportunities to ensure all individuals are gainfully employed, healthy, and resilient. As leaders come together to deploy federal and state funds, Pathways to Prosperity provides easily accessible data and analysis that can support a shared, evidence-based understanding of specific impacts and opportunities.
The Pathways to Prosperity series builds on NCoC’s data infrastructure and the advocacy network developed for the Pandemic to Prosperity series and the Civic Health Index. View the latest report.
Supporting Democracy’s Data
Census Quality Reinforcement Task Force
CQR is a non-partisan, multi-disciplinary learning community for research, education, and coordination around census data quality and fitness for use for three primary use cases: congressional apportionment, redistricting, and the distribution of federal funds. The CQR Task Force brings together a strong, united voice of civil society leaders, historians, statisticians, demographers, and others that is needed to ensure the Census Bureau can achieve the best possible, detailed enumeration of America’s population and safeguard the accuracy and quality of the Decennial Census and American Community Survey.
Since the release of the 2020 Census, CQR has worked to research modernization of the Population Estimates, the dataset that every year updates population totals underlying every economic indicator and health statistic, and helps govern the distribution of more than $2 trillion in population-based federal funding every year.
Understanding the Digital Civic Discourse
Algorithmic Transparency Institute (ATI)
The Algorithmic Transparency Institute (ATI) is focused on bringing greater transparency to the digital platforms that impact civic discourse. ATI does this by developing tools, collecting data, producing research, and supporting analysis that furthers a shared understanding of the role of digital media on society and our democracy. ATI enables researchers, journalists, and civil society advocates to track and understand our digital civic discourse across social media about news, politics, public health, climate, and civic health. Learn more about ATI.