Filipino American helms Pew’s Studies on Asian American Experiences, Attitudes, and Views
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Neil G. Ruiz (SOURCE: PEW RESEARCH CENTER)
At the helm of Pew’s effort to dive deep into the Asian American condition in the U.S. is Filipino American political economist Neil G. Ruiz, who is strikingly cut out for his research leadership role. Aside from his educational and professional bona fides, he brings the added perspective of a US-born child of immigrant Filipino parents.
Ruiz leads Pew’s New Research Initiatives, is an associate director of race and ethnicity research, and is also the principal investigator of the Center’s comprehensive study of Asian Americans. He was tapped as one of the speakers at the May 2023 White House Forum on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.
Armed with a PhD from MIT, a master’s from Oxford, and a B.A. from UC Berkeley, he held key posts at the Brookings Institution, World Bank and Asian Development Bank, and George Washington University’s Center for Law, Economics and Finance before joining Pew. Growing up in Oxnard, California, he was always curious about his parents’ ancestral homeland. This led to a study sojourn in the Philippines for his PhD dissertation on “labor migration, particularly the exodus of labor from the Philippines.”
Correcting Gaps in the Data
Race and ethnicity surveys tend to omit the Asian American population, and even if it is included, the reports generally aggregate Asian Americans as a group, obscuring differences among diverse subgroups. So, Ruiz feels personally gratified that his parents can “see their challenges reflected in the data,” he told a Zoom interview with the City Resource Group/Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of Public Engagement in October 2022.
“Asian Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group at 24 million, yet their voices are still largely unheard, their challenges are not fully seen in data,” he said.
This shortcoming was starkly exposed during the COVID pandemic. Health policy advocates seeking targeted responses to the crisis were frustrated by the lack of disaggregated national and local data on Asian Americans that could reveal the specific health, economic, and social vulnerabilities of diverse subgroups. To begin addressing this dearth, Ruiz’s team at Pew uses both “quantitative as well as qualitative” methods of research.
For example, applying a traditional quantitative approach while adapting to the COVID lockdown, the team did an online survey on pandemic-related hate violence from April 5 to 11, 2021 of 5,109 U.S. adults, including 352 Asian adults, based on a national, random sampling of residential addresses.
That survey revealed that a third of Asian Americans said they changed their daily routine out of fear of threats and assaults; 81% of Asian Americans overall saw violence against them rising during the pandemic. This compares with the 56% of all U.S. adults who said the same. (Ruiz told Positively Filipino that Pew has not yet updated the findings on anti-Asian hate, but that they will release a study “later this fall looking at experiences with discrimination that will touch on related themes.”)
“It’s virtually impossible,” however, “to use traditional survey methods to capture the attitudes of some subgroups within the U.S. Asian population,” Ruiz explained. Many Asian Americans are immigrants from countries with a wide range of languages and cultures. For example, Bhutanese, Hmong and Laotian Americans each make up 2% or less of all Asians living in the United States. “It is a challenge to survey (them) using traditional survey methods. Creating written surveys in several languages is too costly,” he added.
“Adapting to the COVID lockdown, the team did an online survey on pandemic-related hate violence from April 5 to 11, 2021 of 5,109 U.S. adults, including 352 Asian adults, based on a national, random sampling of residential addresses.”
Using Combined Methods
So, from Aug. 4 to Oct. 14, 2021, his team applied qualitative methods, holding the largest focus group study Pew had ever conducted – “66 focus groups with 264 total participants organized into 18 distinct Asian ethnic origin groups, fielded in 18 languages and moderated by members of their own ethnic groups,” according to the Pew website.
“We want(ed) to focus on studying within-groups variation, rather than comparative research across groups,” Ruiz said. Also conducted virtually due to the pandemic, the study was able to field participants from all parts of country, enabling researchers to gather views, attitudes, and opinions from smaller Asian ethnic groups seldom reflected in traditional polling.
The resulting report, “What It Means to Be Asian in America” is a trove of insights on issues of identity and belonging among respondents from various Asian American subgroups, from the pressure felt by some US-born Asians to hide part of their heritage for fear of social isolation and ridicule, to no-win stereotypes arising from the “model minority myth.”
More Insights to Come
Pew is committed to doubling down on exploring the experiences of all Americans, Ruiz told Positively Filipino. “We are committed to conducting deep dive studies, with unique multi-year, multi-lingual, mixed methods approaches for Hispanic, Black, and Asian Americans, (making) sure to look at factors like ethnic origin group, nativity, age, education level, income and immigration experience.”
His team, Ruiz said, is planning to release more reports over the coming months on discrimination, immigration, and examining Asian Americans living in economic hardship: “Stay tuned and reach out to info@pewresearch.org if you are interested in receiving notice about our publications.”
Video: What Does It Mean to be Asian in America (Source: The Stanford Center for Asian Health Research and Education)
