How the Vibe Check
Works.

The Four Signals

Every place gets four scores, each the share of young people whose answers about that place say:

• Belong: they feel like they belong there.
• Connect: they’re connected to people there, friends, family, or the adults who run it.
• Safe: they feel safe there.
• Be Me: they can be themselves there.

The Vibe Check is the average of the four, shown out of 5 stars. A place scores high when young people say all four things, in their own words, again and again.

What Goes In

How Answers Are Read

1. Spoken answers are turned into text. Names, handles, phone numbers, emails, and addresses are removed before anything else happens.
2. Natural language processing finds the place being talked about and matches it to a mapped spot.
3. It tags the reason, like “nobody tells us to leave” or “my whole team is there,” and which of the four signals that reason expresses. One answer can express more than one.
4. It reads the tone, so “it’s not safe after dark” counts against Safe instead of for it.
5. The Youth Board spot-checks tagged answers every week and corrects anything read wrong. Their corrections are kept, so the reading gets better over time.

How It Adds Up

The YouthVoice aggregator turns thousands of individual answers into one score per place:

• One person, one voice per place. If someone talks about the same spot five times, it counts once.
• Recent counts more. Answers from the last 90 days carry the most weight, so the rating moves when a place changes.
• Small numbers are pulled toward the middle. A place with a handful of answers is blended toward the regional average until enough people weigh in, so one great day can’t top the list.
• Three perspectives before it’s published. A place shows up only after at least 20 young people have talked about it and parents, neighbors, or local businesses agree on what’s going on.
• Fair across neighborhoods. Counts are compared with how many young people live in each zip, from the Census, so bigger areas don’t win just by being bigger.

Each spot’s rank is its place among the spots in the region with a published index. The “why” you see in a pin comes straight from the most common reasons and who people go there with.

Public Data We Use

Youth voice tells us how a place feels. Public data tells us about the place, so partners can see what makes the high scorers work:

• Young people nearby: population under 18 by zip, from the U.S. Census Bureau.
• What’s there: parks, libraries, community centers, courts, pools, and skate parks, from OpenStreetMap.
• Getting there: nearby bus stops, routes, and walking time, from transit data mapped in OpenStreetMap for OCTA and Long Beach Transit.

What It Is Not

• Not a rating of any business or agency. It’s about how young people feel in a place.
• Not a safety report. If someone could be hurt, call 911 or use Say Something.
• Never about one person. No individual answer, name, or score is ever published.

Sources

• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, 2020–2024, population under 18 by ZIP Code Tabulation Area. census.gov ACS 5-year API
• OpenStreetMap contributors, accessed through the Overpass API. Data available under the Open Database License. openstreetmap.org/copyright
• Transit stops and routes for Orange County Transportation Authority and Long Beach Transit as mapped in OpenStreetMap. octa.net, ridelbt.com
• Youth voice: answers, pins, polls, and +1s collected on YouthVoice.ai, with names and identifying details removed. Safety and privacy

Learn More

Want the full method, a walk-through of the math, or the index for a place you run? Ask the Youth Board. You can also read how we work, every brief, and the bylaws that set the rules for what gets published.