Overview

LABarometer is a research center housed at the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR). We conduct basic and applied social science research on issues affecting Los Angeles County residents, with the aim of informing academic research, public discourse, and policy. At the heart of our research is the LABarometer Panel, a probability-based Internet survey panel of approximately 2,000 adults randomly selected from households throughout Los Angeles County. The LABarometer Panel is a sub-panel of the Understanding America Study.

LABarometer has three ongoing data collection efforts:

LABarometer surveys are fielded to the LABarometer Panel on a biannual basis to monitor social and economic conditions in Los Angeles County. These longitudinal surveys focus on four dimensions of individual and community well-being: livability, affordability, mobility, and sustainability. LABarometer surveys include questions about residents’ lives, their attitudes and behaviors, and the challenges they encounter in their communities, filling data gaps on topics ranging from housing insecurity and climate resilience to transportation behavior and the economy.

COVID-19 tracking surveys are fielded to the LABarometer panel as part of a national survey effort called Understanding Coronavirus in America. This longitudinal survey was launched in March 2020 to track the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on U.S. residents. Surveys cover a number of topics related to COVID-19, including health-related attitudes, preventive health behavior, mental and physical health, employment, discrimination, family, and education.

Our Contextual Database includes hundreds of Los Angeles County neighborhood environment measures culled from administrative and geospatial data sources. These data can be downloaded and used on their own to explore neighborhood conditions in Los Angeles or linked to LABarometer survey data to enrich survey analysis.

The Panel

The Panel

  • The LABarometer Panel is an Internet panel of approximately 2,000 adults living in households throughout Los Angeles County. It is a sub-panel of the Understanding America Study (UAS), a national Internet panel of 14,000 U.S. residents maintained by the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research. 

    LABarometer sampling and recruitment procedures are handled by the UAS team. These procedures were designed to minimize bias and ensure LABarometer accurately represents the L.A. County population. 

    For more information about the LABarometer Panel, including up-to-date demographic information, recruitment and retainment procedures, standard variables, and survey weights, please see our LABarometer Panel Information sheet.

  • LABarometer sampling and recruitment procedures are handled by the UAS team. These procedures were designed to minimize bias and ensure LABarometer accurately represents the L.A. County population. 

    To select households for our panel, we use an address-based probability sampling approach. This means households are randomly selected from a comprehensive list of L.A. County mailing addresses provided by the U.S. Postal Service. Any adult aged 18 and older living in a contacted household is eligible to participate in our panel.

    To recruit selected households into our panel, we follow a multi-step recruitment protocol that includes a pre-notification postcard, multi-modal recruitment strategy, Internet tablets, monetary incentives, and follow-ups. This protocol was designed to maximize participation and is based on established best practices. More detailed information about UAS recruitment procedures can be found here.

    All surveys fielded to the LABarometer Panel are programmed by the UAS and hosted on the UAS website. Following UAS protocols, surveys distributed to the panel are in both English and Spanish and are mobile-friendly. Average response rates for individual surveys are 70-80%. 

    To participate in a survey, panel members can use any computer, cell phone, or tablet with Internet access. The majority of panel members have their own internet access, but internet access is not a barrier to panel entry. Panel members who do not have access to internet are provided with an internet-enabled tablet to ensure their regular participation in our surveys.

Core Surveys

  • LABarometer surveys are fielded to the LABarometer Panel on a biannual basis to monitor social and economic conditions in Los Angeles County.

    From 2019 to 2022, LABarometer survey waves comprised four surveys, fielded three to six months apart. The surveys covered the following topics: Livability, Mobility, Sustainability & Resilience, and Affordability & Prosperity. In 2022, LABarometer moved to a biannual survey frequency and these four surveys were combined and reduced in size to the following two surveys.

  • The LABarometer survey on Livability & Affordability tracks neighborhood livability and affordability stress in Los Angeles County, guided by the principle that a livable neighborhood is in one in which residents feel happy, healthy, safe, socially connected, and have access to affordable goods, services, and amenities. The survey covers the following topics: life satisfaction, stress, housing quality and plans, neighborhood satisfaction, crime and safety, social engagement, as well as the accessibility and affordability of four key resources in L.A. County – housing, healthcare, food, and education. The survey also includes LABarometer’s consumer sentiment index, a set of six questions designed to monitor individual finances and the economy.

  • The LABarometer survey on Mobility & Sustainability tracks environmental sustainability, transportation behavior, and community resilience in Los Angeles County, inspired by efforts to reduce automobile congestion, minimize environmental impacts, and increase the county’s resilience to climate change. The survey covers a number of topics, including heat and pollution exposure, natural disaster preparedness, pro-environmental behavior, transportation sentiment, transportation access and behavior, and the steps residents are taking to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The survey also includes LABarometer’s consumer sentiment index, a set of six questions designed to monitor individual finances and the economy.

Core Survey Data

  • Links to our survey data and documentation are included below. For a cleaned and harmonized longitudinal file of all of our completed surveys, see Longitudinal Data. For individual survey datasets, see Individual Survey Data

    UAS registration is required to download any LABarometer dataset. To become a registered user, please visit the UAS registration page and create an account.

  • The LABarometer Longitudinal File is a cleaned and harmonized dataset containing all waves of LABarometer Survey data. Variable names have been harmonized, allowing easy longitudinal analysis. For the vast majority of cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, this longitudinal file will be the dataset of choice.

    Follow the “Data” link below and you will be taken to a page on the UAS site where you can download the LABarometer Longitudinal File (available in Stata and CSV file formats). Click on the codebook link to download the longitudinal file codebook directly.

    LABarometer Longitudinal File Data 

    LABarometer Longitudinal File Codebook (direct download)

  • For individual survey datasets, you can follow the Data & Codebook links below to view the codebook and metadata and to download individual survey datasets. You can also visit LABarometer’s data page on the UAS website for direct data download links.​ 

    Note that each LABarometer survey has a UAS survey number as LABarometer is a sub-panel of the Understanding America Study.

    WAVE 1

    • Livability Survey (July 19, 2019 – September 30, 2019) – UAS 194 – Data & Codebook 
    • Livability Survey National Supplement (August 12, 2019 – September 08, 2019) – UAS 199 – Data & Codebook 
      • See satisfaction, neighborhood, and financial sections
    • Mobility Survey (December 11, 2019 – February 7, 2020) – UAS 219 – Data & Codebook 
    • Sustainability Survey (June 03, 2020 – July 13, 2020) – UAS 286 – Data & Codebook 
    • Affordability Survey (September 30, 2020 – November 1, 2020) – UAS 312 – Data & Codebook 

    WAVE 2

    • Livability Survey (November 9, 2020 – January 7, 2021) – UAS 320 – Data & Codebook  
    • Mobility Survey (March 2, 2021 – April 30, 2021) – UAS 379 – Data & Codebook 
    • Sustainability Survey (October 14, 2021 – January 9, 2021) – UAS 363 – Data & Codebook 
    • Affordability Survey (July 19, 2021 – September 5, 2021)  – UAS 403 – Data & Codebook

    WAVE 3

    • Livability & Affordability Survey (June 6, 2022 – September 4, 2022) – UAS 468 – Data & Codebook  
    • Mobility & Sustainability Survey (January 27, 2023 – March 31, 2023) – UAS 510 – Data & Codebook  

    WAVE 4

    • Livability & Affordability Survey (July 13, 2023 – September 30, 2023) – UAS 566 – Data & Codebook  
    • Mobility & Sustainability Survey (February 21, 2024 – April 21, 2024) – UAS 595 – Data & Codebook

    WAVE 5

    • Livability & Affordability Survey (July 24, 2024 – October 15, 2024) – UAS 637 – Data & Codebook  

Covid-19 Survey

Covid 19

  • COVID-19 tracking surveys were fielded to the LABarometer Panel as part of a national survey effort by the UAS, called Understanding Coronavirus in America (UCA). UCA surveys cover a number of topics related to COVID-19, including attitudes and preventive behaviors, mental and physical health, employment, discrimination, family life, and education.

    Understanding Coronavirus in America launched as a stand-alone survey (wave 1) on March 10, 2020, and a tracking survey (waves 2-29) on April 1, 2020. Tracking survey waves 2-24 were administered to consenting members of the Understanding America Study panel (including the LABarometer sub-panel) on a bi-weekly basis from April 1 2020 through February 16 2021. Waves 25-29 of the tracking survey were administered on a monthly basis from February 17-July 20, 2021. Subsequent survey waves (30-33) have been administered on a quarterly basis as stand-alone surveys, similar to Wave 1.

    At the request of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, a short supplement was added to tracking survey waves 2-29 to increase the frequency of survey data collection in Los Angeles County – from bi-weekly to weekly in waves 2-24 and from monthly to bi-weekly in waves 25-29. 

  • For a more detailed description of the content and design of the UCA data collection effort in Los Angeles County, and to access the data, visit the UAS’s COVID Los Angeles data page.

    For a more detailed description of the content and design of the UCA data collection effort at the national level, and to access the data, visit the UAS’s COVID National data page.

Contextual Data

Contextual Data

 

Currently Under Construction. Coming Soon!

Team

Kyla Thomas

Director of LABarometer

Sociologist

kylathom@usc.edu

Arie Kapteyn

Executive Director of CESR

kapteyn@usc.edu

Tania Gutsche

Co-Director of CESR

Understanding America Study Manager

tgutsche@usc.edu

Data Analyst and Survey Methodologist

Economist

angrisan@usc.edu

Evan Sandlin

Data Analyst

Political Scientist

esandlin@usc.edu

Michele Warnock

Administrative Assistant

LABarometer & CESR

mwarnock@usc.edu

Greg Steigerwald

Research Assistant

Master’s Candidate of Public Administration

gsteiger@usc.edu

Publications

Services & Pricing

  • If your organization is interested in adding questions to an LABarometer survey or fielding your own survey to our LABarometer panel, we offer a simple pricing structure based on the sample size you need and the estimated time a survey takes to complete.  

    We offer additional services as well, including:

    • quantitative data analysis
    • data reports
    • data consulting
    • qualitative data collection (interviews, focus groups)
    • questionnaire design
    • survey testing
    • human subjects research advising
    • application development
    • visual displays
    • graphical interface
    • sample management design

    For additional service or pricing information, please contact us directly at labarometer-l@usc.edu.

Contact Us

LABarometer

Other Inquiries

If you would like to learn more about LABarometer or have any specific questions, please contact us using the information here.

 

Phone

213.821.8923 (phone)
213.821.2716 (fax)