Was there really a grunge factor in Seattle?
Unique Data Set Gift Creates World Class Research Opportunities at Washington State

BY GARY LINDSEY

Social scientists say it would cost millions of dollars to replicate data sets donated to Washington State University by Leigh Stowell, the founder of Leigh Stowell and Company, a Seattle- based proprietary market research company. In the eyes of social scientists, the information donated last summer is a priceless research resource that will allow WSU students, faculty, and researchers to develop and test a number of key hypotheses about social and political change in North America over the last decade.

“There are literally hundreds of research topic possibilities,” according to WSU Professor Nick Lovrich, who was instrumental in acquiring the gift and has worked with the company’s data sets in the past. The data gathered by Leigh Stowell and Company not only provide demographic information about most major metropolitan markets in the United States and some in Canada, including Seattle, Spokane, and Vancouver, but also include valuable psychographic information—responses to questions about attitudes and values—which will help social researchers determine the cultural assets, values and life-style perspectives of distinct regions and demographic groups.

“Was there really a grunge factor in Seattle?” asks John Kicza, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts, as an example of a question a researcher might answer. “With this information you could really explore that question and even find out if there were lasting changes within the community because of it.” Other topics that WSU researchers may address include the decline of community and political involvement during the twentieth century and how that phenomenon varies from one part of the country to another.

The data donated to Washington State come from years of market specific research by Leigh Stowell and Company, Inc., covering the decade of the 1990s and beyond—to researchers, a perfect slice of life from North America’s key metropolitan areas.

Lovrich and others at Washington State see the data being used across the University. Research possibilities include many of great importance to the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, such as attitudes about crime and public safety, gender equity, fairness, bridging gender and racial differences, and assessing the consequences of internet use.

Using the Harvard-MIT Record of American Democracy Web site as a model, data from the Stowell gifts will be set up in a digital archive to be operated as an on-line download service for researchers throughout the U.S. and Canada.