This Report is a collaboration between the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) and the Center for Civic Engagement at Miami University Hamilton. It examines the overall civic health of Ohio's communities. Using indicators such as time spent volunteering, participation in neighborhoods and communities, and social connections, the 2010 Ohio Civic Health Index Report measures Ohioans' commitments to civic engagement, political knowledge, and community service.

The Center for Civic Engagement at Miami University Hamilton provided primary leadership for this project. The mission of the Center is to build the will and capacity to solve public problems through education, research, and advocacy. As a regional campus, we remain committed to our mission of actively working in our communities to meet Ohioans' educational needs and to work collaboratively on community problems.

NCoC, in partnership with the Civic Health Index Indicators Working Group, has published America's Civic Health Index annually since 2006. These reports have informed Americans about the leading indicators of our nation's civic health and have motivated citizens, leaders, and policymakers to strengthen the foundations of civic engagement. America's Civic Health Index has become the leading gauge of how well Americans are connecting to one another and to their communities by measuring rates of volunteering, voting, membership in civic and religious organizations, trust in other Americans and key institutions, and other civic behavior and attitudes. The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, signed by President Obama in April 2009, directed NCoC to work in partnership with the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) on a Civic Health Assessment. The first co–produced assessment between NCoC and CNCS was released in September 2010.

Starting in 2008, the Harry T. Wilks Leadership Institute and Miami University published the Ohio Civic Health Index as an in–depth measure of state–specic data. Starting in 2009, Miami University Hamilton's Center for Civic Engagement began publishing the Ohio report. Last year's report, Civic Engagement in Hard Economic Times , reported a downturn in service with rising unemployment and foreclosure rates across Ohio. Although overall giving and civic behaviors were down in 2009, the report reected Ohioans' willingness to support individuals within their own households and support networks in times of need.

For the sake of this Report , we dene civic engagement as a broad concept that includes several of the most frequently measured and discussed forms of civic participation. We use a balanced and broad denition that includes forms of participation that both affect the government (voting, some forms of political voice) and involve direct service and philanthropy. Some of these indicators could also be characterized as components of social capital; thus, civic engagement and social capital are not meant to be fully independent concepts. We have examined ve forms of civic engagement for the purposes of this Report :

Table 2 summarizes the percentage point estimates for the main civic indicators, along with a moving average of the past two to three assessments (when data are available).