BY MATT DULIN

Building on the four-decade legacy of the Houston Area Survey, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research is now home to one of the largest longitudinal panel studies of a single urban area.

The Greater Houston Community Panel, launched in 2022 in partnership with the University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health, now includes nearly 11,000 adults living in Fort Bend, Harris and Montgomery counties.

“The panel lets us take a deeper look at the lives of residents making up the fifth largest metro area in the nation, learning about macro challenges and issues, neighborhood processes and programs, and individual aspirations and experiences,” said Daniel Potter, co-director of the institute’s Houston Population Research Center.

To ensure the diversity of the Houston region was represented, participants were targeted using address-based sampling with an oversampling of non-white neighborhoods. Multiple times a year, panel members complete surveys, allowing for both long-term studies as well immediate data collections in response to disasters, events, politics and other rapidly evolving dynamics.

“By working alongside community organizations and leaders, researchers are collecting data that is more likely to be put into action, informing decision-making throughout the Houston region,” Potter said.

Data from the GHCP is made available to researchers in a public use file published annually. Learn more at https://kinder.rice.edu/ghcp.