We combined UCOP Basic Needs Dashboard data (multi-year) with a custom UCSD student survey (n=116) to study whether service awareness and utilization align with food insecurity rates, and how patterns differ by demographic groups.

Main takeaway: awareness is often high, but usage is much lower, and awareness alone shows weak correlation with food insecurity—suggesting additional barriers like access, eligibility, stigma, and adequacy of support.

Research Question

Primary: How does utilization of UCSD’s Basic Needs Center (BN) services affect food insecurity levels among students?

Subquestions

• What is the impact of engaging with the CalFresh office on approval rates?
• How does CalFresh approval influence reliance on FRN and TFP?
• How do FRN / TFP / CalFresh usage rates correlate with food insecurity rates?

Data

Dataset 1 — UCOP Basic Needs Dashboard (UC-wide)

• Observations: ~50k
• Variables: 5
• Coverage: Multiple survey years (e.g., 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022)
• Use: Food insecurity rates by campus + identity groups over time

Dataset 2 — COGS 108 Student Basic Needs Survey

• Observations: 116 (unfortunately a small n due to survey distribution challenges)
• Variables: 22
• Use: Demographics + awareness/usage of BN services + CalFresh application outcomes

Methods

1) Cleaning & Harmonization

• Standardized UCOP categories across years (e.g., older binary categories vs. newer low/very low).
• Cleaned survey columns for analysis-ready naming.
• Collapsed multi-select demographics into consistent buckets (e.g., “Multiple”, “No Response”).

2) Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)

• Service awareness vs. usage distributions (BN Hub, TFP, FRN, CalFresh Team).
• Demographic breakdowns (race/ethnicity, gender, year, additional identities).
• Heatmaps (normalized contingency tables) for demographic vs service response patterns.

3) Combined Comparison + Correlation

• Used 2022 UCOP as the closest comparison point to our survey year.
• Mapped identity labels between datasets and compared:
  • % food insecure (UCOP) vs % aware/used services (survey)
• Computed Pearson correlations between food insecurity and awareness (per service).

Key Findings

Awareness ≠ Utilization

Across services, many students reported:
“I’ve heard of this service, but never used it.”
Usage remained consistently lower than awareness.

Usage varies by demographic group

• Usage patterns differed by race/ethnicity, gender identity, and class standing.
• Some subgroups showed particularly low awareness/usage, suggesting outreach gaps and/or service barriers.

The full analysis, including visualizations and statistical summaries, is available in the notebook.