Previous studies have ranked social media use by Asian American higher than the general population. Why then would Pew Research do a study on social media users and exclude Asian Americans?
That’s the question Julia Huang asked in a blog for Fox News. Huang is CEO of Intertrend Communications, an advertising firm specializing in connecting companies with the Asian American community.
This is the same Pew Research that was roundly criticized by the Asian American community for its study the Rise of Asian Americans. Community leaders argued that study ignored the diversity of the Asian American community and instead painted a picture of the model minority.
Huang argues the consequences of ignoring an entire community “not only deprive Asians a seat at the table, but it denies our society as a whole valuable information,” she writes. “If an audience isn’t counted, it doesn’t get any attention, funding or support for pressing issues. Consequently, myths about Asian-Americans as the “model minority” prevail.”
You can read more of Huang’s argument on Fox News.
Hi,
Its a very simple answer, sample size. The survey methodology that Pew utilizes doesn’t allow them to fully present Asian Americans.
With that said, I’ve asked Pew many times.
” why no Asian Americans” always the same response, year after year. Seems to me, as someone that works in culture branding & research that the methodology could be altered to include the growing diversity of Asian America? Makes no sense, and frankly, after nearly 4yrs of asking them.. it presents a foundational bias in their total research platform. Its just crazy…hire people that speak Japanese, Korean, Chinese .. and such!
Well said.
From Sara Goo via Facebook Re: Pew Research Omitting Asian Americans from Social Media Study: "Yes, actually there is a good reason for this. Asian Americans *are* included in our national polls. But they are not broken out in the tables because the sample sizes in our polls weren't large enough to be statistically significant. Even though AAs are a growing population, they are still not big enough in terms of representation within a random sample size of 1,000 people. It's too bad the author of the Fox piece didn't call to ask Pew — or if she did, she didn't quote anyone to represent that side of the story"
Sara. Your response is not the first time we've heard that the issue is sample size. How big of a sample size would you need to be able to break out Asian Americans? What are the additional costs involved? From a community perspective, its disheartening not to be included in the conversation, which I'm sure you can understand
From Sara Goo via Facebook on Pew Research & Asian Americans: I don't know the exact dollar amount and don't officially speak for Pew Research so I'm sharing this with the AAJA community which I am a part of and I can put you in touch with someone from communications if you want something more official. I know many of you are familiar with Pew Research because of the trusted data we produce and you may think we're a big company. But we are a non-profit organization funded with charitable dollars. Basically it comes down to not just doing a larger sample size, which costs more, but the AA community is multilingual so we'd have to hire interviewers who are fluent in many languages. We'd basically have to cut a lot of other research to do this. Pew Research decided to do a big investment in looking at the AA community last year — the first organization to do a big survey just on the Asian American population, because we thought it important. But we just cant afford the investment with every survey. I'm sure this isn't very satisfying answer but it's the truth. Perhaps as polling organizations try new survey approaches, with online surveys for example, there will be a more cost-effective way to do this than the current phone surveys. But please don't assume that because we can't do it now that there is no interest in doing it, now or in the future. There are many other groups that are also small that we can't break out. Every organization, as news journalists know all too well, have to make choices about resources and costs. For non-profits that is true as well.