Why Northeast Washington Trends?
Our Goal: To Democratize Data
Northeast Washington Trends exists to give the communities in Ferry, Pend Oreille, and Stevens Counties a way to assess how they are doing in key quality-of-life areas, such as education, health, and the environment. The Trends also seeks to improve local, public decision making by providing relevant data in an easily navigable website. The data are offered as neutral information for all parties involved in public policy issues.
More specifically, the goals are:
- To collect and share a broad spectrum of information to support informed decision making by individual community members, governmental policy makers, non-governmental organizations, businesses, researchers and the press.
- To benchmark Northeast Washington Trends against Washington State trends or other comparable communities to better understand our strengths and opportunities.
- To enable analysis of these trends.
Our Approach
One of the challenges of developing the Northeast Washington Trends site is the regional nature of the many communities we serve in three different counties. Many volunteers participated in 7 focus groups to determine the top indicators in each category. In determining which data sets would be used, the following guidelines were followed:
- Selected by members of the community
- Valid measurements defined by good science and social science
- Can be benchmarked to Washington State trends or similar sized communities
- Available repeatedly over time to allow trend analysis
- Sourced from credible sites
Our Participants
The focus groups were anchored by leaders from a wide range of community groups covering the public, private, and non-profit sectors. These leaders made up the Steering Committee for Northeast Washington Trends:
- Julie Abernethy -- Tri-County Economic Development District
- Joe Bond -- Ferry County Commissioner
- Alan Botzheim -- Pend Oreille County Sheriff's Office
- Bob Campbell -- Providence Mt. Carmel Hospital
- Scott Douglas -- Tri-County Economic Development District
- John Friederichs -- Ferry County PUD
- Malcolm Friedman -- Stevens County Commissioner
- Staci Hanlin -- Tri-County Economic Development District
- Leslie Jones -- Tri-County Economic Development District
- Debra Kollock -- WSU Stevens County Extension
- Mike Lithgow -- Pend Oreille Community Development
- Steve McCollough -- Curlew School District
- Bob Meshishnek -- Colville Police Department
- Brad Miller -- Ferry County Commissioner
- Tom O'Brien -- Rural Resources
- Ron O'Halloran -- Ferry County Memorial Hospital
- Mike Petersen -- The Lands Council
- Dan Peterson -- Pend Oreille PUD
- Dan Read -- Cusick School District
- Donna Jo Smith -- CCS-Institute for Extended Learning
- Bunny St. Clair -- Northeast Washington Association of Realtors
- Jim Sweet -- RE/MAX
- Carol Villers -- Northeast Tri-County Health District
- Dian Wear -- Pend Oreille County Commissioner
- Irene Whipple -- Ferry County Planning Department
- Dale Wilson -- Rural Resources
- Dave Windom -- Northeast Tri-County Health District
- Jamie Wyrobek -- Pend Oreille County Economic Development Council
Northeast Washington Trends is Not:
- A community indicators site with the objective of ranking the most pressing needs within Ferry, Pend Oreille, and Stevens Counties. The objective of Northeast Washington Trends is to collect and publish relevant data for the benefit of the communities. It is up to the citizens to access and apply the information according to their individual value judgment.
- A community dashboard that gives a ranking to each data series as to its importance and whether the trend is positive or negative.
- A pre-determined set of data to promote certain views about the three counties.
- A way to provide strategies to deal with issues identified by the data.
A Process, not a Product
The Northeast Washington Trends is as much a process as a product. Focus groups around each trend category continue to meet to determine opportunities for improvement and community goal setting based on real time data. We encourage you to get involved in your community! Please take advantage of our feedback box to give us your thoughts and help us to continue to improve this site!
The role of Eastern Washington University
Website development and maintenance comes from Eastern Washington University's (EWU) Institute (Institute) for Public Policy and Economic Analysis. The Institute is a multi-college unit conducting applied analysis at EWU. Institute, staff and students, gathered the data, wrote the explanations, conducted statistical tests & designed this site. The Institute has created several similar indicator websites, including those for Grant County, Benton and Franklin Counties, and Skagit County, among others. Links to other sites can be found on the Other Sites page in this site.
The Institute's Director is Dr. Patrick Jones. Kelley Cullen is the Institute's data analyst. Many students have helped develop and maintain both data and verbal content. Student research interns who were instrumental in creating this project were: Bryan Lockwald, Holly Miller and Emily Wavra. Meredith Hale was the student design intern for this project. Kandyce Moore is the Institute's web developer.
As you explore this site, we encourage your feedback to help continue to improve this community resource.