Research and Assessment Methods Flashcards
7 cards from real AICP practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Research and Assessment Methods flashcards as text
A planner is designing a fiscal impact analysis for a proposed residential subdivision. Which component should be INCLUDED in the expenditure side of the analysis?
Answer: Increased costs for school, fire, and public works services
Fiscal impact analysis compares new public service costs (expenditures) against new tax and fee revenues generated by the development.
Which technique is used to identify the minimum level of activity a project or business needs to cover its costs?
Answer: Break-even analysis
Break-even analysis determines the point at which total revenue equals total costs, indicating the minimum scale needed for financial viability.
A metropolitan planning organization (MPO) is comparing the long-term community impacts of two alternative land use scenarios. The MOST appropriate tool would be:
Answer: An integrated land use-transportation model such as UrbanSim
Integrated land use-transportation models like UrbanSim simulate how land use and travel patterns co-evolve over time under different policy scenarios.
When a planner reports that a finding is statistically significant at p < 0.05, it means:
Answer: There is a 5% chance the observed relationship is due to sampling error rather than a true effect
A p-value of 0.05 means there is a 5% probability of observing the data (or more extreme data) if the null hypothesis were true.
A planner is reviewing a proposed food desert intervention and wants to measure whether grocery store access actually improved diet outcomes. Which study design provides the strongest causal evidence?
Answer: Randomized controlled trial assigning neighborhoods to receive or not receive a new store
A randomized controlled trial is the gold standard for causal inference because random assignment controls for both observed and unobserved confounding factors.
In a housing market analysis, a planner calculates the vacancy rate for rental housing. If there are 500 vacant units out of 5,000 total rental units, what is the vacancy rate?
Answer: 10%
Vacancy rate = (vacant units / total units) × 100 = (500 / 5,000) × 100 = 10%.
A planner is analyzing longitudinal employment data and notices a sharp drop in manufacturing jobs coinciding with a national recession. To distinguish local industrial decline from broader economic forces, the planner should use:
Answer: Shift-share analysis decomposing growth into national, industry-mix, and local competitive effects
Shift-share analysis separates employment change into national growth, industry composition, and local competitive shift components, isolating local from national factors.