The Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS)

• L.A.FANS Overview
• About L.A.FANS
• Project Findings
• L.A.FANS Organization
• L.A.FANS Funding
• Why L.A.?
• Why Participate?
• Privacy Policy
• Contact Us

The Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS) web site provides information about L.A.FANS and tries to answer any questions you may have about the study. If you are a participant in L.A.FANS or have been asked to participate, we hope you will take a few minutes to read about L.A.FANS.

Para ver la información en español.

The Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS) is a study of adults, teens, children, and neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. Our goal is to understand:

• The importance of neighborhoods in children's development and well-being
• The effects of neighborhood stress on adults' and children's health

Research suggests that safe, supportive neighborhoods are important for children, teens, and adults. But what makes a neighborhood a positive place to live? We are trying to answer this question by comparing the lives of children and adults in a broad range of neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles County.

L.A.FANS also provides information for communities, organizations, and local government on the areas they serve. This information is used to help improve and expand services for children and families in Los Angeles.

In 2000-2001, we interviewed roughly 3,000 families in 65 neighborhoods. In 2005-2008, we will reinterview these families as well as new families who recently moved to these neighborhoods.

L.A.FANS is conducted by the RAND Corporation, a non-profit research organization in Santa Monica in collaboration with the UCLA School of Public Health. Each interview is conducted by a professional interviewer from Research Triangle Institute (RTI).

The following are reports of our findings from L.A.FANS-1.

The following are reports of our findings from L.A.FANS-2.

The Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS) is a joint project of the RAND Corporation and the UCLA School of Public Health. The study was designed by researchers and policy specialists in Los Angeles and throughout the United States . We are sociologists, demographers, economists, child development specialists, geographers, public health specialists, and doctors.

Most of us live in Los Angeles and some of us are life-long residents. We know many of Los Angeles ' neighborhoods as residents, parents, tax payers, students, teachers, neighbors, friends, commuters, and volunteers.

The L.A.FANS research team is headed by Dr. Anne Pebley at UCLA and Narayan Sastry at RAND.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides financial support for L.A.FANS. NIH funds research projects that make important contributions to scientific knowledge and that contribute to improving the health of the American population. NIH also requires researchers to comply with strict rules about protecting the privacy and rights of participants in research. L.A.FANS has strict measures to protect the rights and privacy of people participating in L.A.FANS, including obtaining a Certificate of Confidentiality from NIH. To find out more about NIH, visit www.nih.gov.

L.A.FANS is funded by four institutes and offices at NIH: the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (OBSSR). Although the study is funded by the federal government, the identities of L.A.FANS participants will not be released to government agencies or anyone else.

Los Angeles County is big and so diverse. Spread over more than 4,000 square miles, it is larger than Delaware or Puerto Rico and is home to more than 10 million people. The county reaches from Palmdale to Long Beach, and from West L.A. to Claremont. This size and diversity mean that the 65 neighborhoods where we are conducting the survey includes residents from many different backgrounds who live in different types of neighborhoods.

Los Angeles is also a newer type of city. Most of what we know about urban life comes from cities in the east and mid-west. As anyone who visits L.A. knows, the physical layout, social life, politics, and neighborhoods in Los Angeles is different from these older cities. We believe it is important to understand how neighborhoods work (or don't work) in these newer urban areas in which Americans increasingly live and work.

If you have been asked to participate in L.A.FANS, your participation is very important to the success of the study and the usefulness of the results. To represent all types of neighborhoods in Los Angeles , we selected a random sample (like a lottery) of 65 neighborhoods in L.A. Within each neighborhood, we selected a random sample of the population. Taking a “random sample” is like putting all addresses of houses and apartments into a bin, mixing them up, and drawing out the first 50 houses or apartments without looking. A genuinely random sample of the population can provide information about the whole population. We need you in the sample to represent yourself and other people like you.

Participants in L.A.FANS are making an important contribution to knowledge about neighborhoods, families, and communities. Ultimately, you are also helping to build a foundation on which we can develop programs to improve our neighborhoods, Los Angeles , and other cities.

Participation in L.A.FANS is easy. All you need to do is to be willing to contribute some of your time. L.A.FANS participants answer questions about their daily lives, their family, and the neighborhood they live in. Most participants in L.A.FANS-1 found the interview to be interesting and enjoyable. Several people told us that the interview gave them a chance to reflect on and talk about their lives, something they rarely do. In L.A.FANS-2, we also ask you to participate in a health assessment which includes your blood pressure, lung function, and other basic measures of health. You will get the results of this health assessment in the mail.

L.A. FANS is strongly committed to protecting participants' privacy. Because participants trust us with the information they provide, we bend over backwards to make sure that the privacy and confidentiality is maintained and protected. Everyone involved in L.A.FANS, including interviewers, health technicians, and researchers are regularly trained and certified on strict rules and procedures to protect privacy and confidentiality.

For example, interviewers never discuss the answers participants gave during interviews with anyone else. They are also never allowed to identify participants by name or tell anyone (except other project staff) which addresses they are visiting or which neighborhoods they are working in. Information is stored in restricted computer files which cannot be accessed by anyone outside the project. Researchers working on the project do not have access to information on participants' names or addresses.

As an extra layer of protection, L.A.FANS is reviewed regularly by three independent committees (at RAND, UCLA, and RTI) who are in charge of protecting the rights and privacy of participants in research studies. These committees thoroughly review and assess the adequacy of all aspects of L.A.FANS procedures. They must approve all procedures before we begin to interview participants and they monitor our performance throughout the study.

L.A.FANS has also obtained a Certificate of Confidentiality from the United States Department of Health and Human Services. This Certificate legally protects L.A.FANS and participants from any efforts to obtain participants' answers or information.

For more information about L.A.FANS, please contact us at: