A University of Maryland researcher was among those selected to conduct the most extensive study on Asian American people to date.
The National Science Foundation awarded the grant, which totaled more than $500,000, to Janelle Wong, this university’s Asian American Studies Program director, and three other University of California professors. The study will look at different aspects of the Asian American experience — such as racial discrimination, their thoughts on the presidential election and civic engagement — before the 2016 presidential election.
Wong, the only East Coast representative on the team of researchers, said this study will combat the lack of data on Asian Americans, who are projected to be the third-fastest-growing racial group in the United States, according to Pew Research Center.
“We will find out a lot more about their attitudes towards different policies,” Wong said.
For example, there is a misconception that Asian Americans are conservative on tax policies, Wong said. Most people don’t know that Asian Americans are generally pro-gun control, she added.
“That’s just something, you know, you don’t hear a lot about,” Wong said. “[Asian Americans are] sort of invisible when it comes to those kinds of issues. And yet they look very distinct from the U.S. population.”
The survey will be conducted in two waves. The first will focus on the presidential election, civic engagement and issue preferences. The second wave will review racial discrimination, attitudes between different groups and attitudes toward social justice, such as Black Lives Matter, Wong said. She said the surveys will be sent to groups in every state and will be weighted based on the results.
The study will be conducted through surveys sent out in 11 different languages, which is unusual, Wong said. The languages include English, Spanish, and nine Asian languages such as Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese and Hindi. The language variety allows researchers to report on various Asian-American groups in the United States.
Karthick Ramakrishnan, the associate dean of public policy and political science professor at the University of California, Riverside, said general surveys don’t have enough Asian American respondents. This is because a significant amount of Asian American adults prefer to take surveys in an Asian language, he said.
“If you don’t survey Asian Americans with Asian language support, you are missing out on a big chunk of the population,” Ramakrishnan said.
The surveys conducted through the NSF grant are meant to “fill the gaps of the Asian American population,” he added.
