Science activity

The Delta Residents Survey (DRS) was a household survey conducted in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in Northern California in 2023 to better understand residents' attitudes on key social and environmental challenges in the region. The data were collected via a survey (available online through Qualtrics or as a print version), with survey invitations sent by mail to a random sample of 82,000 household addresses in the rural “Primary Zone” of the Delta (survey Zone 1), the suburban and urban “Secondary Zone” of the Delta (survey Zone 2) and Delta-adjacent “EJ Communities” in South Sacramento and South Stockton (survey Zone 3). Maps of the survey zones are available in project documentation and the Results Summary Report. The survey was available in English and Spanish. Over 2,300 responses were received, constituting a 2.9 percent response rate. The survey included 43 multiple choice and short response questions, broken up into five sections around key themes: Sense of place and way of life Regional priorities, concerns, and quality of life Environmental and climate change experiences, concerns, and policy preferences Civic engagement and good governance Demographics The research was conducted by a collaborative team of environmental social scientists across multiple research universities (UC San Diego, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, Oregon State University, and Sacramento State University) and was funded by the Delta Stewardship Council's Delta Science Program (a California State Agency). Significant community engagement and partnership efforts were carried out to improve the relevancy of survey questions and interpretation of data. Additional resources, including summary report of results and other research products using the data, are posted on our project website as they become available: https://ktomari.github.io/DeltaResidentsSurvey/. We also have a GitHub repository, where R scripts (and accompanying plain-text descriptions of the functions used that can be translated into other programming languages) are posted, which provide the easiest way for reading in the data and ensuring variable types are set correctly. We highly recommend using or referencing these scripts for the easiest and most accurate use of the data: https://github.com/ktomari/DeltaResidentsSurvey.