FAQ

Metro Atlanta Speaks (MAS) is a survey designed to offer a statistically representative snapshot of Atlanta region's residents, thus providing insights about where we stand as a region on important issues. The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) has conducted the MAS since 2013, and done so in collaboration with Kennesaw State University's A.L. Burruss Institute of Public Service & Research most of those years. The MAS is the largest survey of perceptions and attitudes in the Atlanta region, and as such, is able to offer county-level comparisons. MAS covers key topics such as transportation, the economy, workforce development, housing and affordability, quality of life, and other emerging regional issues.

For the first eight years of the survey, random-digit dial (RDD) was the method, with cellphone share (compared to landline) increasing each year. For the last five years, with technological change and also due to need to reduce costs, the survey became mixed mode, with an online component added to the RDD element. Find more details at the MAS report on the website atlantaregional.org/what-we-do/research-and-data/metro-atlanta-speaks-survey/

You can find more details about the MAS 2026 Survey at atlantaregional.org/what-we-do/research-and-data/metro-atlanta-speaks-survey/. If you cannot find an answer to your question there, contact Bill Huang at bhuang@atlantaregional.org .

Surveys are based on samples, and the level of confidence we have in any one number is tied to the size of the sample underlying that number. We suppress results when the underlying sample is too small for an estimate to meet our confidence standards. Our sampling method ensures that we obtain reliable estimates at the county level and for the subgroups we report in the dashboard, but the samples are not large enough to allow us to do both simultaneously. You can see the full list of surveyed groups in the report at atlantaregional.org/what-we-do/research-and-data/metro-atlanta-speaks-survey/ even though we may not display them in the dashboard.

Costs of doing any extensive surveying continue to mount. Reasons such as

1. expanding the number of questions asked in a survey tends to reduce response rate and increase costs
2. asking just one question in a topic area is generally unhelpful
3. ARC has many "mission-centric areas" (like transportation and land use) that we focus on
4. There are politically sensitive issues in which a regional commission shouldn't be involved.

That said, reach out to Bill Huang at bhuang@atlantaregional.org if you want to suggest a question that might be viable for the survey.

Yes you can! On the desktop site, there is a download CSV button to get the data in the graph you are looking at and a download PNG button to get an image of the graph. To access the data, you can find the tables on atlantaregional.org/what-we-do/research-and-data/metro-atlanta-speaks-survey/.

The areas covered have varied by iteration of the survey. The "prime" focus has always been the Atlanta Regional Commission area. As such, for the last five years, MAS has covered the eleven counties of ARC along with the City of Atlanta. For five of the earlier years of the survey, the ten ARC counties (of that time) plus three added counties were covered, to meet the needs of a client sponsor. In the first year for MAS (2013), ten counties were covered, with results only representative regionally.

Not every question was asked every year, response categories have evolved over time, and the MAS itself was not conducted in 2022. We include MAS only from 2016 forward in this dashboard, as it provides the most comparable results. And we suppress the time series on a question if the question wording or response categories have changed enough that the data are no longer comparable.

Again, there is variation. At the regional level (whatever the overall region has been, in any given year), results have also had margins of error (MOEs) of under 2%, usually under 1.5%, meaning that we are reasonably confident that the "true" result is only a maximum of 2% higher or lower than the sampled result that is reported. For the core, larger counties, as well as for the City of Atlanta, MOEs have ranged from 3% to 5%. For smaller suburban and exurban counties, MOEs have ranged from 5% to 7%.

The N has changed with the coverage and the methodology. In 2013, only 2,200 people were surveyed. A sample of this size allowed us to report regionwide figures but not county-specific results. The N was increased in subsequent years in order to allow us to report county-level data and has varied from about 4,000 to about 5,500. The number surveyed by jurisdiction has varied between 200 and 500. Fulton has been surveyed above 600 in various years due to oversampling for reporting on the City of Atlanta sub geography.