AICP Research and Assessment Methods 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: 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?
- Property tax revenue generated by new homes
- Impact fees paid by the developer at permit issuance
- Increased costs for school, fire, and public works services (Correct answer)
- Sales tax from materials purchased during construction
Correct 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.
Question 2: Which technique is used to identify the minimum level of activity a project or business needs to cover its costs?
- Net present value analysis
- Break-even analysis (Correct answer)
- Monte Carlo simulation
- Regression discontinuity design
Correct 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.
Question 3: A metropolitan planning organization (MPO) is comparing the long-term community impacts of two alternative land use scenarios. The MOST appropriate tool would be:
- A cross-sectional household survey
- An integrated land use-transportation model such as UrbanSim (Correct answer)
- A Delphi panel of five local developers
- A benefit-cost analysis of a single infrastructure project
Correct 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.
Question 4: When a planner reports that a finding is statistically significant at p < 0.05, it means:
- There is a 5% chance the observed relationship is due to sampling error rather than a true effect (Correct answer)
- The finding is practically important and meaningful for planning decisions
- 95% of survey respondents agreed with the finding
- The effect size is large enough to matter in practice
Correct 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.
Question 5: 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?
- Post-intervention survey of neighborhood residents
- Randomized controlled trial assigning neighborhoods to receive or not receive a new store (Correct answer)
- Before-and-after comparison within the treated neighborhood only
- Expert review of national grocery access literature
Correct 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.
Question 6: 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?
- 5%
- 10% (Correct answer)
- 15%
- 20%
Correct answer: 10%
Vacancy rate = (vacant units / total units) × 100 = (500 / 5,000) × 100 = 10%.
Question 7: 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:
- Location quotient analysis comparing local to national sector shares
- Shift-share analysis decomposing growth into national, industry-mix, and local competitive effects (Correct answer)
- Input-output analysis of local supply chains
- A hedonic price model for commercial real estate
Correct 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.
AICP Research and Assessment Methods 5
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?