The Community Credit research project explores pathways for trusted collaboration between credit unions and the communities they serve. To understand the experiences of people historically underserved by the consumer financial services industry, we focused in particular on the lived experience of low-income residents in Southern California. As part of a larger, mixed-methods study, in 2022 we conducted an online survey investigating people’s everyday financial practices, evolving perceptions of trust and risk, and their unmet financial needs. The general population survey data was collected between April 15 and April 22, 2022. The credit union data was collected between May 3 and July 18, 2022. This data set contains the responses of the survey participants after excluding any personally identifying data.

All study materials and procedures were approved by the University of California, Irvine Office of Human Research Protections and the Institutional Review Board (protocol ID 20216839). This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2137567. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Survey data was collected via the Qualtrics platform. The survey contains 52 questions. It was distributed to the general population in zip codes within the counties of Los Angeles and Orange. It was also distributed directly to members of a large credit union headquartered in Orange County (“large” according to NCUA asset classes). Participants were eligible to complete the survey if they live in Orange County or Los Angeles County, are older than 18, and have a combined household income of less than $100,000. Incomplete responses have been removed. The survey yielded 1,370 complete responses (1,213 from the general population participants and 157 from members of the large credit union).

Note that the files do not contain all the responses from the survey questions. Responses that provided potentially identifying information were removed. Survey participants’ gender, education status, employment status, and marital status were removed; data on these elements are provided in aggregate in the readme file. Responses are segmented into two files reflecting participants from the general population (“Gen Pop”) and from the credit union (“CU”).