AIR "Ready to Learn" Population Analysis
When the American Institutes for Research (AIR) began an early childhood development project with the federal Department of Education and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, they required a complete analysis of impoverished families with young children to understand the psychosocial variables influencing caretakers’ attitudes toward reading and language development. This information would be critical to determining the outreach strategy for the PBS "Ready to Learn" series of television programs, designed to encourage co-viewing among caregivers and children, and to promote early literacy. AIR wanted in-depth understanding of the factors that affect decision making in families at or near the poverty level across America, so they contacted CSF for help. We conducted interviews with community-based organizations (including United Way and Boys and Girls Club of America) in each of the project’s five target Designated Market Areas (DMAs) to identify characteristics of families living in poverty, educational and economic services available to families, and examples of successful outreach strategies currently in use. CSF used this information to create individualized outreach strategies for seven target family types (TFTs) that fit the profile of families with young children in Title 1 school programs. Additionally, CSF performed geographic analysis for AIR to organize and guide a series of focus groups. The analysis was used as a springboard for additional research in working with this targeted population. AIR was able to identify the geographic areas which contained the greatest concentration of their target families and, using the data from the analysis, worked with PBS to design marketing materials, outreach strategies, and a series of focus groups to provide more accurate corporate data.
