Data Decode: Andrea Sandoval
Andrea Sandoval is a research assistant at the FIU Metropolitan Center. She focuses on data collection and infographics surrounding economic development, housing and equity studies in South Florida. Some of her works include the Doral economic development plan alongside the Havana Project, where she researched how Little Havana residents compare to Miami Dade residents in metrics such as income, and educational attainment. She has also been a part of the Palm Beach Housing equity study.
Her work doesn’t stop at data collection, as she also connects with the communities she researches as it is vital to understand how these metrics affect many individuals in a personal level.
Transcript:
Andrea: Hello, my name is Andrea Sandoval. I’m a research assistant at the FIU metropolitan center. I’ve been working here for about a year and six months, I have a background in sociology and I mostly contribute in data collection and infographics housing, economic development and equity studies as well.
Andrea: Some of the reports that I have been a part of are the Palm Beach County housing equity study. I have also helped out with the Doral economic development plan and Havana project as well for the city of Little Havana.
My day to day as a research assistant is mostly doing data collection, gathering that data from sites such as the Census Bureau, I work mostly on Excel, I make tables charts, that help better explain this information. And I find ways to insert it into our reports that make most sense to kind of demonstrate some of the work that we are trying to show. I also write sometimes, technical writing. So basically what the charts and the tables that I am making, what they reflect.
Some of the infographics that I have worked on with that I usually do the data collection, the design, and also what the most important things that the data tells us. So that when we post them on our sites like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, the important points are really highlighted for our followers to see.
With the Little Havana project that I worked on, it was probably one of my earliest ones, I had the task of creating a community profile for the Little Havana community. So basically the point of that community profile was to see how Little Havana residents compared to Miami Dade County as a whole. So in metrics, like educational attainment, like income, how much people pay for rent, and other metrics that are similar to that demographically, and economic as well.
And I was fortunate enough to talk about some of the major points from that community profile in front of the Housing Committee, sorry, in front of the Housing Committee, of Little Havana.
So a lot of the work that I do as a research assistant as well, is not just kind of data collection, but also connecting with the communities that I’m writing about. And another instance, I was a part of helping with outreach for a veteran survey that the Metro Center worked on. And I basically went with some of my colleagues to VA hospital down in Miami and we kind of had, we talked about the survey a little bit to some of the people that were walking in for their appointments, walking out.
We talked to them about how the survey was going to help them out you know, so asking personal questions, how they were doing, questions that range from mental health to how much they were paying for housing. And the end goal of this was to basically put together a report that tells us how the veteran community in Miami Dade is doing so connecting with people on that personal level, trying to convince them to take the survey was another part of my job as a research assistant.
So it’s, um, it’s cool how I can do several things, besides, you know, just kind of data collection. So the on the field work is also important. Yeah.
Andrea: So when we measure poverty, we look to the poverty line. And basically, this is a way to measure poverty status. Basically, that poverty measure compares cash income pre tax against like a threshold, that is basically three times the cost of a minimum food diet. And this is measured, this measure is adjusted to like a family size. That is kind of like the main thing that we look at when we are going to measure poverty status. But when we look at at poverty status across different race and ethnicity, a bit more things come to play.
The main thing mostly is opportunities. Historically, it’s known that black people, black women particularly do not have as many opportunities compared to other demographics. So when we are going to look at poverty status, for example, in Miami Dade for black people, it was significantly higher than for Hispanic or White, non Hispanic people. And that’s when you kind of asked yourself what is the cause of this? So then if you look at educational attainment, you also see how black people are considerably below white and Hispanic people, you know, and this is not just kind of in our area of Broward or Miami Dade, but nationally as well. So measuring this measuring poverty status with different ethnic groups that kind of goes, it kind of has a lot to do with reflection on opportunities that are presented for people besides that, looking beyond race and ethnicity but you also see how for women for single mothers, particularly for poverty status it’s even beyond that of what it is for the differences are beyond what it is for across races.
Andrea: So I think that why there was a difference between the poverty status of single mothers in Miami Dade and Broward, I think that is mostly due to how expensive Miami Dade is compared to Broward, you know, of cost of living cost of living mostly.
There’s still some areas in Broward where you could you could probably find housing for you know, less than 1600, 700 dollars. I mean, it’s going to be difficult, but it’s possible compared to Miami Dade where everything is just some significantly more expensive. So I think that’s probably one of the main reasons as to why it’s different. Because the big difference mostly is in white single mothers, you know, the number in Dade is 16% Compared to 10% in Broward. So, you know, that’s probably the largest thing, we could kind of come up with reasons as to why am I that be if it’s a thing of circumstance, if it’s a thing because there’s more people in Miami Dade in general. But if we look at the numbers with for black single mothers, it’s actually higher in Broward.
And I mean, proportionally, Broward does have more black people, you know, proportionately to the population of the of the county, the number is, is pretty similar. So it’s mostly Dade where you see that difference. And with Hispanic or Latinx, single mothers the number is higher in Broward. So, you know, it’s all it’s pretty much I think that with poverty and how these numbers like manifests themselves, it has to do with kind of like where one ends up.
Because going back to what I said earlier about how people you know, are trying to survive, if you happen to stay in one place you because you had a job there and you think it’s somewhat stable, you know, and then eventually, maybe you lose your job. But just because you kind of already began to establish roots, it could be difficult to leave that. So that could be an explanation as to why the numbers are not so even. But obviously, you know, you kind of remember how in Miami Dade it’s more expensive to live, things are more expensive, you know, there’s more people job, the job market could be difficult, you know, to find something with limited education. So, yeah, that’s mostly I think, the main reason as to why the difference was so notable for white single mothers.
But besides that, it seems relatively even for black single mothers and again, with Hispanic women, it’s higher in Broward, but I wouldn’t really say that it’s significantly higher. I think that if there was if these numbers were significantly higher for the three demographics, or if one was higher, it would definitely raise questions for our local government, whether that be in Broward or Dade to kind of question how well they’re leading, what programs are available, things like that, which, you know, when we write these reports, a lot of, the main reason why we want to write these these reports is because one we want to inform people, again, it’s kind of easy to just get lost in your day to day and not be aware of what some people are going through, but also we want it to result in policy. You know, when our local governments read our work, we hope that they can, you know, genuinely like, understand what these numbers mean, and how you know, you know, you read like, oh, there’s 390,000 men and women that live below the poverty line in Miami Dade, but it’s like, there it’s 390,000 people, you know, it’s not just a number.
So if the number was significantly higher, we would obviously hope that our local governments end up doing something about it. But you know, it’s still pretty high but as far as Broward and Miami Dade it seems to be somewhat similar.
