Course talk:POLI3802012/Survey/Poverty Inequality

Hi all,

Really sorry, I know that this is kind of late. But I'm just wondering if 'extreme poverty' might be an extraneous part of question 2 (To what degree do you view homelessness and extreme poverty as a social problem in Vancouver.) In the interest of being more concise, I feel like the rest of the questions are very much focused on homelessness, and this seems to be a bit of an outlier.

I was going to remove it but I don't want to do so without some consensus.

Thoughts? Objections?

Hey, there's mention of extreme poverty in question 1 as well I think, but yeah I agree with you that it makes the survey more specific if we just focus on the issue of homelessness so I'm okay with taking that part out. Also, I don't know if this is necessary, but for question 4 (to what degree do you feel the government is responsible for aiding the homeless in Vancouver) , I was wondering if maybe we should be more specific about the level of government we're referring to. For example, add municipal or local government? I know it says "in Vancouver" at the end but it might be good to clarify. That sort of ties into question 5 though, so that might be redundant. Just a thought!

Okay, so I took out 'extreme poverty' from questions 1 and 2. I think that since we have question 5 following question 4, the level of government sort of works as an 'if so, then specify which' follow up to the initial question of how responsible government should be. I'm not sure if we need to change it but if we do then we probably would need to re-work both questions. I think it works well as it is, but I'm open to ways we could re-formulate it. Emily, was that what you were getting at?

Hey guys,

Taking out 'extreme poverty' sounds good to me. If we're referring to homelessness, I think that necessarily suggests a certain degree of poverty. And as for question 4 works actually because we don't want to prompt them, so by saying "in Vancouver" we might be suggesting that it should be at a municipal level. Plus, as Alanna says, we tackle that issue in question 5, so my vote is to leave it.

Hey,

Sounds good, let's leave it!

Hey guys, this discussion has been fantastic I thought we should start a new thread however to list our questions and begin to narrow them down to 5 (plus the previous one was getting LONG) After reading through the comments I found 6 questions (or categories) that people have agreed upon (sorry if I missed any questions that were voiced, just add them in below)

1) What cause(s) do you attribute the most to homelessness in Vancouver? 2) Do you believe that there are enough effective assistance programs for those experiencing extreme poverty? 3) To what degree do you see homelessness/poverty in Vancouver as a social problem? 4) To what degree is the government responsible for aiding the homeless in getting off the streets? 5) What level of government do you feel should be responsible, more so, for addressing homelessness in Vancouver? 6) Do you support the opening of additional safe injection sites in Vancouver?

So if people want to reply as to what question(s) they want to include, we can go from there into editing the question to encompass/exclude what we want, and also phrasing it as to what are answer are.

Hey guys, I agree with Grace's idea to properly define poverty, however wouldn't excluding those that live in government subsidized housing make the our measurement less valid? Also a few of the questions pertain to assistance programs and to the degree that government should be involved so if we were to exclude those that live in government subsidized housing I think we would have to consider altering some of the questions. Thanks Cam for gathering the questions, with regards to the potential answers, perhaps the first question can be answered as Grace suggested with a few options (drugs, mental illness etc). The second question could be a yes or no question and questions three, four and six could be answered numerically (although there would be a scale issue, would 1 to 4 scale as Jason suggested earlier be good?) Also do you guys think that we could somehow combine questions four and 5? Then we would have 5 questions that we can further refine. What do you guys think?

II think we are definitely on the right track but I have concerns about question 6. I realize that substance abuse plays a role in poverty and homelessness but are we assuming that it plays a role in all cases by including this question? I definitely think the questions has merits but with only 5 questions i'm not sure it tells us enough about homelessness and poverty.

I think that question 4 and 5 can definitely be combined somehow. Or, we could just remove question 4 altogether, since question 5 does give us an indication of how much the government should be responsible in addressing homelessness in Vancouver. Any ideas on how we could combine these two questions? If we can combine the two questions then we can include question 6, since drug addiction seems to be playing a prominent role in homelessness.

I'll vouch for your idea that we could scrap question 4. I think question 5 is a better question as it will provide more answers, and it's probably not necessary to include both 4 and 5.

Agreed, question 4 can be specifically answered (or have similar results) on peoples opinions on the role of government on homelessness with question 5

I agree with what you guys all just said, question 5 is simply much better providing a clear answer

Hey guys, I posted the questions that we agreed on. If you want to add/edit, feel free (i.e. adding a don't know option)

Cheers!

Hi Elise,

I added a "don't know option" to the questions which I felt were necessary (for accuracy). Of course, if you guys don't agree, please let me know!

Also what do you guys think about changing question 3:

Do you believe there are satisfactory and effective social programs available for those experiencing homelessness and poverty to help them overcome those circumstances?

Answers: 1. Strongly disagree, 2. Disagree, 3. Neutral, 4. Agree, 5. Strongly agree

To:

"There are satisfactory and effective social programs available to those experiencing homelessness in Vancouver" Answers: 1. Strongly disagree 2. Disagree 3. Neutral 4. Agree 5. Strongly agree 6. Don't Know

I think this makes more sense to lead this question on with a statement. Let me know what you guys think!

I think that's great Laura. Also, maybe I'm just nit-picking here, but is it necessary to have both satisfactory and effective in the question? because satisfactory kind of has the connotation that the programs are 'doing what they're doing' where as effective means they are actually working and giving good results.

But maybe I'm just being a nit-picker lol - Let me know, thanks guys

Also, small thing, can we add a blank space next to the option 'other', and if there are some responses that are repetitive, we can add those results into developing our data.

hey guys so that "neutral" response on question number 4(on the responsbility of government for aiding homelessness,etc) was really bugging me, so i just edited it out (i know it wasn't really democratic of me). However if anyone has any contrary opinions and wants it back,just do so.

Grace,

I completely agree, I'll edit the question now and remove the 'satisfactory' part to the question. Let me know if this is okay with you guys

Laura

The questions look great! Just a few of minor tweaks i have in mind...I think we should add a "don't know" option for question one, delete "satisfactory" from question three, and change "neutral" to "don't know" in question four. Other than that, PERFECTION!

OK GREAT WORK TEAM!! I'm guessing this is the final copy for the assignment? So have a really great break everyone! :D

Hi Guys, It seems as though we are in some agreement about the questions… If not please free to make suggestions. I though getting them formatted similar to our final submission might help us organize our thoughts better. Please make suggestions regarding the answers as I did them as best I could but recognize they might need a little work. Also, I left out the safe injection site question for reasons I mentioned earlier. If as a group we’d like to include it, no problem, we’ll just have to drop one of these or find away to combine two.

1. What cause do you attribute most to an individual experiencing extreme poverty and homelessness in Vancouver?

Answers: 1. Consequence of poor personal decisions, 2. Victim of uncontrollable circumstances, 3. Failure of social system, 4. Mental illness or disability, 5. Other

2. To what degree do you view homelessness and extreme poverty as a social problem in Vancouver?

Answers: 1. Not at all, 2. Very little, 3. Somewhat, 4. Very much

3. Do you believe there are satisfactory and effective social programs available for those experiencing homelessness and poverty to help them overcome those circumstances?

Answers: 1. Strongly disagree, 2. Disagree, 3. Neutral, 4. Agree, 5. Strongly agree

4. To what degree do you feel the government is responsible for aiding the homeless in Vancouver?

Answers: 1. Not responsible at all, 2. Somewhat responsible, 3. Neutral, 4. Responsible, 5. Very responsible

5. What level of government should be most responsible for providing aid to the homeless?

Answers: 1. None, 2. Municipal, 3. Provincial, 4. Federal

For our final submission, are we going to format it as each question on a 5-scale measure, or have different scales depending on the question? I feel that we should definitely have some sort of pattern where we follow each question on the same sort of numerical scale. As well, if we include an "other" option, I think we need to include a "Do not know/I'm not sure" option, that way, respondents are forced to give an answer that they may not know. Don't forget that we're surveying a population that may not be aware of the situation! (Maybe we can prevent this by providing a summary or case study of the statistics of homelessness/poverty we are trying to measure?)

I have a problem with the first question, as I believe that this question is a sort of loaded question. A person with very little/no knowledge of homelessness may contribute their answer based on an uninformed decision and rather just on the prospects on the options available, so I think what we should maybe do is load the question with information. Furthermore, I think that we should define what exactly we would describe homelessness and poverty to be as. The more specific we are the more informed decisions we are able to gain.

I think your concern about a person making an uninformed decision is fair, but if we prompt them with something to make an "informed" decision, the answer could actually turn out more biased. It might be better to get a more "organic" unprompted response. We're probably safe in assuming that people will have a knowledge of homelessness.

Hi Jason,

I mentioned earlier that perhaps adding a "don't know" option to the questions where we utilize the Likert Scale may yield more accurate results since some people may not have an opinion about the question itself at all (not neutral) I'm not sure if you agree with this...what do you guys think?

I am personal in favour of the questions as they stand and it terms of answers I'm confident that we're providing a large range of choices that should appeal to everyone. That being said, I wouldn't mind the addition of a "don't know" answer option (or something of the same effect), however I don't think it is 100% necessary. Also I don't think a "neutral" option is necessary either for question #4. The government is either responsible or not, aside from the varying degrees of "somewhat" and "very", there is no "neutral" degree.

I agree with Cam, I think it definitely would make sense to remove the neutral option for question 4, since it's kind of redundant to answer "neutral" to that specific question. I think answering "neutral" is probably the same as answering "somewhat" responsible. We could add a "don't know" option in place of "neutral" . Also, I have some concerns with question 1:

1. What cause do you attribute most to an individual experiencing extreme poverty and homelessness in Vancouver? Answers: 1. Consequence of poor personal decisions, 2. Victim of uncontrollable circumstances, 3. Failure of social system, 4. Mental illness or disability, 5. Other

The option "consequence of poor personal decisions" may be quite ambiguous. We may need to define what we think are "poor personal decisions" - Should we narrow this down? What do you guys think?

Also, do we all agree that removing the safe injection question altogether site is a good option?

Yes, I think it is fine to remove the safe injection site question. While it is obviously a controversial topic regarding the state of the Downtown East Side, I think it is probably safer to maintain our focus on poverty inequality so not to veer to far toward drug use.

If we are removing "drug use" as an option, I do believe that we need an alternative like "consequence of poor personal decisions." Whether the latter is the best alternative, I'm not sure. But I think it will do the trick.

That being said, I love all of the questions above, but I do believe providing a "don't know" option is necessary for ALL the questions.

Great work everyone! :D

Hey guys, I was just thinking of some initial questions we might get a crack at:

What cause(s) do you attribute the most to homelessness in Vancouver?

a. Drugs and alcohol abuse b. Illnesses or disabilities (mental, diseases, etc.) c. Unemployment or low wages d. Personal tragedy (ex. death in the family) e. Domestic abuse f. Lack of affordable housing e. Lack of government programs g. Others _______________

Do you believe that there are enough effective assistance programs for those experiencing extreme poverty?

a. yes b. no

I like both of those questions. My only thought is that we may want to consider refining the responses for the first question. Not that any of those are not valid reasons, the amount of options may just be overwhelming for the respondents. Just as a start we should consider removing and/or revising "personal tragedy". The value is somewhat vague and respondents may equate that drug/alcohol abuses for example.

What do you think about opening with something like:

To what degree do you see homelessness/poverty in Vancouver as a social problem?

1. not a problem at all 2. somewhat of a problem 3. it is a problem 4. Severe problem

I'm not sure if this is the best question but I think it's important to establish the view of Vancouverites/British Columbians on homelessness/poverty. Do our respondents see it as a problem? I recognize that homelessness and poverty are not the same thing but I use the terms intechangeably here for the sake of the discussion.

Following that, I thought it might be good to establish to what degree people believe it is the responsibility of the government to address the problem:

To what degree is the government responsible for aiding the homeless get off the streets (or something like that)?

1......... 2......... 3......... 4.........

Then I thought it might be interesting to find out what level of government people think should be responsible for addressing homelessness. Should it be the responsibility of the Provincial government or local governments. I'm not sure how this would work however i do think the views of those that own million dollar lofts in Gastown would have a very different view of what the provincial government's role should be versus those that live in Smithers. NOt sure how to measure this one though...

Then, find out if respondents believe the government is providing appropriate levels of social assistance for those who wish to access it.

1.... 2.... 3.... 4....

That's just a few thoughts... I just wanted to get something out there...

Hey guys,

These questions look great. I like Jason's question about which level of government people think should be responsible for addressing homelessness. We might just measure it as ranking in order which level should carry the most responsibility. i.e. 1 being the lowest responsibility, 3 being the highest __Municipal __Provincial __Federal __Other (like a charity or not for profit organization) I know that's a far from perfect measurement, but it's just a thought.

Based on all of the questions you guys have posted, I'm thinking we'll be able to come up with some broader research questions that could guide us. For example: Does a person's proximity to the DTES have an affect on their attitudes towards poverty/inequality?

Just some ideas!

Hi all,

I was thinking we might want to combine the role of each level of government (municipal, provincial, federal, not a government issue) with a question about how effective people think those levels of governments are at tackling homelessness.

I also think Jason raised an important point that we should probably address. Namely, how do we parse our questions about homelessness from the questions about poverty? Because I think there are a number of issues which may apply to those living in poverty and the homeless, and also issues which pertain to each group individually. Do we want to treat them as two subheadings under a single umbrella or as separate groups altogether? Are we more interested in one or the other?

Also the issue of public housing in relatively affluent neighbourhoods is an interesting thought to explore. Maybe we could formulate a question that asks to what degree a homeowner has the 'right' to refuse the construction of rehabilitative public housing in their areas.

AlannaTom 13:27, 10 February 2012 (PST)

Hey Guys, All of the questions look great. I like Grace's opening question regarding people's thoughts on the causes of homelessness. Also the issue of public housing or low income housing projects (as Alanna has pointed out) might help us gauge support for government involvement and whether or not people believe that the government should play a prominent role in aiding the homeless. I was thinking that a question on safe injection sites might also be helpful. Perhaps a question like: Do you support the opening of additional safe injection sites in Vancouver? Answers could be yes or no or maybe numerical 1=strongly support and 5=strongly oppose. Just some thoughts

It sounds like we have some good potential survey questions developing. We might ask something to measure people's attitudes towards inequality, and whether or not a person's wealth is something they have control over. So a question could be: "People can ameliorate their economic status if they just worked harder" with an option of agree strongly, agree, disagree etc. This question might also help shed light on how much people think the government should be responsible for dealing with poverty/inequality.

Also based on Darren's question about safe injection sites, we could ask something to measure people's attitudes about how much they think drug addiction is a disease that requires treatment.

To address Alanna's questions, there are a couple options. The first would be to define poverty in relative terms and say people who have a household income of less than x amount. There might be some validity issues with using that type of measure though, and people being surveyed may perceive the questions quite differently when you start putting income numbers on things.

Another option is to just focus on the homeless, which would be easier, but we may be excluding people like those living in government subsidized housing.

Thoughts?

(P.S. this is a fantastic discussion!!)

For the purposes of a 5 question survey, it might be easiest to just focus on homelessness. I agree with Grace's point that it might exclude an important group, could we just say "including those living in government subsidized housing"?

On the other hand if we do go with a more general poverty, we could get into territory more about potential redistribution of wealth/wealth being heavily concentrated in a small population.

Based on the questions people have been proposing, I think that we're leaning more towards homelessness, and thinking about areas where poverty is concentrated, rather than the inequality across a larger population.

What do you guys think?

(p.s. I agree with Grace, this is great!)