The Athens Wellbeing

Project Survey

Our primary data comes from the Athens Wellbeing Project survey. To gather longitudinal data on the Athens community, we have administered four iterations of the survey: AWP 1.0 in 2016, AWP 2.0 in 2018, AWP 3.0 in 2021 and AWP 4.0 in 2024-2025.

The past survey instruments can be accessed here:

Technical documentation is an in-depth description of AWP’s data collection approach, methods, and sample. The most recent technical documentation and codebook can be accessed here:

 

DEVELOPING THE

FIRST SURVEY

INSTRUMENT

  • We asked social service providers and leaders of community institutions what information was necessary in order to improve service delivery to their clients and to make progress in achieving their organizations’ mission.

    This feedback was submitted to the AWP advisory committee.

    The AWP research team then compiled this feedback into a list of variables/constructs to include in the survey, also referred to as the “survey instrument”.

  • The AWP Domains

    1. Health

    2. Lifelong Learning

    3. Housing

    4. Community Safety

    5. Civic Vitality

    The survey includes several questions relating to each domain area.

  • These are questions regarding:

    Age, Family size, Race, Ethnicity, Income, Program participation, Education level, Veteran status, County residence

    … and other indicators that may be relevant in quantitative analysis.

  • A validated measure is a question or survey item that has been tested by researchers to ensure that it accurately measures the intended variable.

    Why?

    1. This ensures that the individual questions we used were validated and measured what we intended to measure

    2. It provides an opportunity to compare Athens-Clarke County data to national or state surveys using the same measure

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Developing the First Survey Instrument