How do people feel about the term…

This week, PACE released the data from its Civic Language Perceptions Project, which seeks to understand people’s perceptions of the language associated with civic engagement and democracy work. In partnership with Citizen Data, PACE fielded a nationally representative survey of 5,000 registered voters between November 21–28, 2021. The result is 16,000 pages of data, which offers an incredibly rich dataset and endless opportunities to explore Americans’ relationship to civic language.

The data is accessible via an interactive dashboard where users can see topline responses and run two-way and three-way crosstabs comparing variables like demographics and attitudes. We invite individuals and organizations who share our goal of advancing the norms and values of liberal democracy to play with the dashboard and analyze the data for their own purposes and curiosity. The PACE team will be doing the same over the next few months, and we look forward to sharing our journey with you as we “learn out loud.”

In particular, we know there is a lot of interest in this data from specific angles, so to make the data even more accessible, PACE will be developing and releasing a series of infographics over the next few months.

Below, we are excited to release our first “batch” of infographics, which gives a high-level overview for each of the 21 terms polled in our survey, including the overall breakdown of perceptions, the top five groups most associated with each term, and the racial, age, religious, and income groups that gave each term the highest rating in our survey. If you want to share or download the infographics, you can visit www.PACEfunders.org/LanguageGraphics. There are other ways to get involved with the project, including joining a “deep dive” or applying for a “mini-grant” — we encourage you to learn more about additional opportunities.

PACE would like to extend a special thanks to Rockefeller Brothers Fund for their support and Cameron Blossom for his design in making these infographics possible.

To learn more about the Civic Language Perceptions Project, visit www.PACEFunders.org/Language.

Questions? Email us at Language@PACEFunders.org.