IIMMLA Research Project 2019
About Us
About Our Research
Our Sources
Our group focused on a dataset known as the Immigrant and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles (IIMMLA) study from 2004. This study is the third initiative by the Russell Sage Foundation’s research program to see how well young adult offspring of recent immigrants are assimilating when going through the American education system and labor force. This study focuses on 1.5-3rd generation immigrants in Los Angeles in their young adult years, with the goal of gathering information about how successful assimilation strategies differ among groups.The data was collected through conducted 35-minute long structured telephone interviews with random samples of first-generation immigrants who arrived before age 13 (the 1.5 generation) plus second- and third-generation adults, age 20-39, from as many ethnic subgroups. Interviewees provided basic demographic information as well as extensive data about socio-cultural orientation and mobility, economic mobility geographic, and civic engagement and politics.The amount of data there was to work with, meant there were various different directions to focus the project on, the team decided to narrow down to specific topics, 1) How education level affects income/wealth/occupation (traditional measures of “success”) in children of immigrants in metropolitan LA and 2) How ethnicity correlates with the upward mobility of these immigrant communities.
Our group focused on a dataset known as the Immigrant and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles (IIMMLA) study from 2004. This study is the third initiative by the Russell Sage Foundation’s research program to see how well young adult offspring of recent immigrants are assimilating when going through the American education system and labor force. This study focuses on 1.5-3rd generation immigrants in Los Angeles in their young adult years, with the goal of gathering information about how successful assimilation strategies differ among groups.The data was collected through conducted 35-minute long structured telephone interviews with random samples of first-generation immigrants who arrived before age 13 (the 1.5 generation) plus second- and third-generation adults, age 20-39, from as many ethnic subgroups. Interviewees provided basic demographic information as well as extensive data about socio-cultural orientation and mobility, economic mobility geographic, and civic engagement and politics.The amount of data there was to work with, meant there were various different directions to focus the project on, the team decided to narrow down to specific topics, 1) How education level affects income/wealth/occupation (traditional measures of “success”) in children of immigrants in metropolitan LA and 2) How ethnicity correlates with the upward mobility of these immigrant communities.
Our Process
Our dataset was obtained as a Google Sheet with a codebook, which we used to identify different variables and the questions they represented. In Google sheets, we were able to identify which variables we wanted to use, transpose coded variables with the codebook, and clean up our data for program usage. We exported this data and used Tableau to create a variety of data visualizations and maps.Data visualizations were important to clearly understand and identify the trends between the variables we were most interested in, which was the highest education level, total personal income, occupation, and generation. With the maps, we were able to visualize the way these variables were distributed across the metropolitan Los Angeles area. Because the majority of our data was ordinal data, we mainly utilized bar charts, pie charts, histograms, and symbol plots to easily display comparisons between each variable (Yau, 146).
Research Questions
How do education level affects income and occupation–what we’re defining as traditional measures of “success”–in young adult children of immigrants in metropolitan Los Angeles?
How do these statistics and trends vary and compare across the four generational groups (1.5, 2, 3, 4+) and ethnic groups represented in the study?
The Presentation
We decided to use Wix to host our website, since some of our group members had prior experience using the domain. It is also very user-friendly with no prior HTML or programming experience required. We were able to choose templates in order to start building and mapping our website, implement many functions, such as buttons, audio, and video media, and embed our interactive data visualizations, such as our Tableau maps.
In terms of accessibility and aesthetics, we chose a color scheme that was relatively colorblind-friendly and made sure that there was a clear contrast in colors for readability. We also made sure the website was easy to navigate and had a clear flow that made our data and narrative more readily understood.
Acknowledgements
We would love to thank Professor Ashley Sanders-Garcia for all her guidance and for sharing her knowledge with us. We would also love to thank our TA Dean Gao for their valuable feedback and for informative program demonstrations during discussion. This project would not have been possible without them!
TEAM
Michael Buenaventura
Michael is a 4th-year cognitive science major and digital humanities minor. He primarily contributed to data cleaning and creating visualizations concerning occupation.
Isabelle
Dosdos
Isabelle is a 4th year Anthropology major and Digital Humanities minor. She contributed to overall project management, data visualization, and narration.
Paulina
Flores
Paulina is a 4th year Applied Linguistics major and Digital Humanities minor. She contributed in data cleaning, mapping, and narration.
Haley
Liang
Haley is 4th-year Sociology major and Digital Humanities minor. She contributed to data cleaning, construction of the timeline, and narration.
Chereen
Tam
Chereen is a 3rd year Art major and Digital Humanities minor. She contributed to data visualizations, designing the website, and creating the site's images.