Proposed changes to the federal racial and ethnic classification system in the United States offer a unique opportunity to understand how the general public thinks about Asian American identity and how Asian populations should be classified in federal data. The Improving Asian Classification Typologies (ImpACT) project analyzes public comments submitted in response to two Federal Register Notices: (1) the OMB’s proposed revisions to Statistical Policy Directive 15, 2023, and (2) the U.S. Census Bureau’s draft race and ethnicity coding guidelines, 2024.

Using a mixed deductive-inductive coding framework, six coders working in pairs analyzed comments to develop key themes. Overall, we found the boundaries of the Asian category are contested in the comments, particularly at the intersections with the Middle Eastern and North African, White, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander categories. The geographic subgroups used to define Asian communities, including East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian, are similarly disputed, particularly for communities with identities that traverse regional boundaries. We also found disagreement over whether Census’ pre-defined regional categories should be retained or eliminated, with some commenters arguing that standardized groupings are essential for longitudinal research and reporting, while others contending that pre-defined categories introduce misclassification and can undermine community self-identification. Additional themes examine debates over terminology, data collection practices, and how classification decisions shape community visibility and health equity.

On Wednesday April 15, from 10 – 11:30 AM, CSDE will host a workshop that provides a basic introduction to Agent-Based Modeling (ABM). The workshop will be divided into three sections. During the first third of the course we will review and discuss the basic elements of ABMs and their applications in a variety of fields including demography, sociology, anthropology, political science and public health. In the second section of the course we will work through one or two seminal examples of ABMs and reproduce the models in base R. Due to the limited time available, the R code to build these models will be provided to participants in advance. Finally, we will walk through an example of a complex ABM using the statnet and EpiModel R packages. Students will not need these packages to complete the workshop.

By the end of the workshop participants will be able to describe the unique features of ABM that make them distinct from other modeling approaches, write R functions to produce a simple ABM, and be familiar with additional R packages that provide functionality for ABMs.

On April 15th from 10 – 11 AM PT, the UW Computational Demography Working Group will host CSDE Affiliate Dr. Andrew Messamore (Sociology). Dr. Messamore will deliver a talk titled “The Emergence of Ownership Opacity in Landed Capitalism: Consolidation, Adaptation, Evasion The talk will be held in person at Raitt 223.

Declining sole proprietorship rates among landlords are viewed as indicators of growing corporate control of rental housing. However, declines in sole proprietorship may reflect the popularization of investment vehicles across amateur landlords, causing studies to overestimate the ownership share of firms. Moving beyond political economy, this presentation conceptualizes landed capitalism as a complex and adaptive housing system, and proposes declines in sole proprietorship reflect the emergence of ownership opacity across the landlord population. Evaluating this perspective through an enumeration of landownership in Austin, Texas, results from longitudinal analysis show that the ownership share of small landlords is stable, but that processes of portfolio consolidation, investor adaptation, and regulatory evasion are encouraging opaque ownership structures across landlords of nearly all sizes. These findings suggest ownership opacity is a form of emergent complexity created by population evolution among landlords, and demonstrate the utility of housing systems theory for both the field of comparative landownership studies and policies that aim to address disparities in housing ownership and tenure.

Join CSDE on Wednesday, April 22 from 12:30 – 1:30 PM  for a Workshop on the Northwest Federal Statistical Research Data Center (NWFSRDC) network is comprised by Census-managed secure computing labs within top educational and research institutions across the country where qualified researchers conduct approved statistical analysis on non-public data. These data are collected by various government agencies (Census Bureau, NCHS, BEA, BLS, SSA, etc.) and made available to local researchers through agreements with federal statistical agencies.

This workshop will give a general introduction to- the data available in the University of Washington’s Northwest FSRDC, some examples of work done with different kinds of data, and the process of requesting access to this data. The workshop will be online only, and a Zoom link for online attendance will be provided upon registration. Click Sign Up on the Trumba event page to register.

CSDE is hosting three sets of office hours to help you prepare data visualizations for PAA! Join CSDE Training Core PI Audrey Dorélien, 2026-2027 CSDE Seminar Chair Min Cha, and CSDE Training Director Jessica Godwin to get feedback and consultation on figures for your PAA oral presentations or posters. Both faculty and students are welcome!! Please sign up for a consultation slot here on 4/15/26, 4/22/26, or 4/29/26 between 12 and 1 PM.