MIXED METHOD RESEARCH INFORMING MULTILINGUAL VOTER CAMPAIGN FOR NEWLY ELIGIBLE VOTERS
PROJECT DURATION
March - June 2022
ROLE
Design Researcher, Design Strategist, Project manager
photo credit
Jason Ciaccia
PROJECT OVERVIEW
In 2023, New York City was poised to become the largest city in the U.S to grant noncitizens the right to vote in local elections. 3x3 was engaged by New York City Campaign Finance Board to conduct a research study to understand public awareness and perceptions of a new municipal voting law for non-citizens. Our research goal was to ensure an inclusive research process that connects newly eligible voters with the campaign's messaging and makes voter registration easy to access.
As project manager and design researcher, I helped develop a mixed-methods research study, facilitated focus groups, conducted 1:1 interviews with key NYC immigrant organizations and government agencies and participants, and led the analysis process of qualitative research with a team of 7 multilingual researchers.
OUTCOMES
The New York City Campaign Finance Board planned to use the research findings and recommendations to inform the design and delivery of culturally responsive and multilingual materials for a citywide registration campaign, aiming to engage new non-citizen voters in early 2023.
This research would have supported a significant expansion of voting rights for immigrant communities, regardless of their citizenship status. Unfortunately, a court ruling struck down the initiative, which is currently undergoing an appeal process.
Research Impact
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Informed culturally responsive campaign for a citywide initiative.
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Identified key barriers to participation, such as knowledge gaps on eligibility and registration, enabling clearer and actionable voter education.
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Improved message clarity by delivering tested terminology and recommendations
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Embedded equity into the research process by creating an inclusive framework that centered community voices for future campaign development.
CHALLENGE
How might newly eligible immigrant voters awareness and perception of the municipal law impact participation in upcoming city elections?
Early assumptions from our team and partners suggest that most new eligible voters were unaware of this opportunity.
There was no precedent in NYC for researching non-citizen municipal voting at this scale and therefore limited data on awareness levels, cultural perceptions of voting, or effective outreach strategies for this large, untapped population.
RESEARCH GOALS
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Surface public awareness and perception to explore how newly eligible voters perceive local elections and civic participation
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Identify barriers and drivers informational, cultural, linguistic, or trust-based, that may prevent or encourage engagement in upcoming local elections.
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Understand how linguistic nuances and visuals in existing voter registration campaign materials resonate with potential voters.
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Identify trusted messengers and channels by understanding past personal experiences and the historical context of diverse communities to identify opportunities to build trust.
APPROACH
Understanding our target audience
CENSUS POPULATION ANALYSIS
Our team partnered with a data expert to conduct census analysis to estimate the total population of eligible voting age noncitizens in NYC and their geographic distribution by demographic indicators such as language, race, digital access, educational attainment.
We learned:
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39% of NYC’s foreign born population are voting age non citizens.
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The majority of voting age non-citizens identify as Hispanic/Latino/Latinx.
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The majority of Spanish and Chinese-speaking noncitizen immigrants live in Queens and Brooklyn. Brooklyn.
Distribution of voting age non-citizens in NYC
Focus groups
We held 8 focus group sessions based on our target language groups to help converge findings from our 1:1 interviews and our survey tool.
1:1 in depth interviews
We held In depth semi structured interviews were conducted with eligible new voters to allow for open-ended responses and deeper exploration of target groups’ attitudes.
Survey
We designed and circulated a paper and digital survey to gain a baseline understanding of eligible new voters’ sentiments, priorities, as well as identify information gaps related to the new local voting law.
Key Informant / Expert Interviews
I conducted in-depth interviews with organizations that provide direct services to immigrant communities in NYC which revealed high-level perspectives, concerns and sentiments related to the new municipal voting law. Organizations included: immigrant affairs agencies, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, nonprofits and legal services providers.
RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS
BUILDING AN INCLUSIVE RECRUITMENT STRATEGY
PARTNERING WITH STAKEHOLDERS
Our primary recruitment strategy was to partner with Community Based Organizations (CBOs) who work directly with NYC’s immigrant population. We reached out to 40+ CBOs with the final selection primarily based on the target neighborhoods and language groups identified in our sampling plan. Our qualitative research focused more on difficult-to-reach population groups with limited English proficiency and internet bandwidth.
The CBOs we partnered with were pivotal in the promotion of our survey through the use of their newsletters and social media channels. They also aided in identifying relevant ways the community would be likely to engage such as community events where we canvassed and tabled in order to speak directly to community members to address questions about the research.
MULTILINGUAL OUTREACH PROCESS
As we began the outreach process, our research ambassadors were paired with our partnering CBOs to target specific language groups and neighborhoods. Our research ambassadors were not only bilingual and translators but also native language speakers, some of whom themselves were members of the community in the neighborhoods where they conducted the research. This level of cultural context was necessary to be able to delve deeper into language nuances and learnings.
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Qualitative Research was conducted in English,Chinese, Spanish, Haitian Creole, Bengali & Arabic. American Sign Language (if requested). Survey was also distributed in Russian.
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All posters, surveys and collateral for print and social media were designed in these 6 languages and included QR code access. To include folks who don’t have internet access or limited digital literacy we distributed printed surveys and posters when canvassing in diverse ethnic neighborhoods.
Key Learnings
KEY INSIGHTS
FINDINGS
Our team presented the final findings with the internal Campaign Finance Board team and their partners which included up to 100 CBO’s and agencies.
Insights from qualitative and quantitative data analysis mapped back to our research line of inquiries which included:
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Surfacing public awareness and perceptions
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Assessing drivers and barriers
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Understanding linguistic nuances and word/visual reactions
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Identifying trusted messengers and channels
The findings from this study have not been made public. To learn more about the learnings of this study please contact 3x3 directly.
- Sample pages of presentation shared with internal Campaign Finance Board/NYC Votes team and partners.