The Athens Wellbeing Project

What is the Technical Documentation? An in depth description of AWP’s data collection approach, methods, and sample.

The Athens Wellbeing Survey was developed through a participatory process that included

AWP research team

AWP advisory committee

Community stakeholders

Social service providers and leaders of community institutions were asked 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 “survey instrument”.

  • 5 AWP Domains

    1. Health

    2. Lifelong Learning

    3. Housing

    4. Community Safety

    5. Civic Vitality

  • Questions Regarding

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

    +other indicators that are essential in quantitative analysis.

  • In each domain, many of the questions were validated measures collected from other surveys used in communities across the United States.

    Why?

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

    2. Provides an opportunity to compare Athens Clarke County findings to national surveys

Developing the First Survey Instrument

In addition to Athens-Clarke County, you’ll see a lot of our data and reports on health and health care refer to the Health Service Region. What is the Health Service Region?

Hospital systems in Athens-Clarke serve many people from outside our county. Based on hospital data about how many patients are served from each surrounding county, the Health Service Region is determined. Currently Primary Service Area includes: Athens-Clarke, Barrow, Jackson, Madison, Oconee, Oglethorpe, and Walton Counties. The Secondary Service Area includes Banks, Elbert, Franklin, Greene, Hancock, Hart, Morgan, Putnam, Stephens, and Taliaferro Counties. Together, these 17 counties have a population of over 650,000 and cover 4,843 square miles.