Course talk:POLI380JAN2011Owen/Survey/Poverty

Ok so the 5 questions we have summed up are:

1)How does poverty directly affect you and your family? A) Greatly B)Slightly C)Not at all

2))How important is the issue of poverty in BC to you? A) Very important B) moderately important C) neutral D) moderately unimportant E) very unimportant.

3)Do you believe poverty reduction is the responsibility of private charities, government action or private individuals? A)Private charities B)Government Action C) Private Individuals D) None of the above

4)Do you believe increasing the minimum wage in BC will help to reduce the poverty level? Yes or No

5)Should the citizens tax money be used to reduce poverty in BC? Yes or No

What does everyone think??

Thanks for better wording my question. looks good! hope everyone agrees :)

Fantastic! I think those are perfect. Thanks for summarizing everything we had discussed so far.

Looks great!

I'm trying with this new thread to get an idea of what we've all agreed on and where we all stand before we start finalizing questions...

Things we all seem to agree on:

Focus on poverty in Vancouver/ Lower Mainland

Focus on poverty generally (which includes homelessness but we’re not focusing on it specifically)

No subjective questions? – (are we all in agreement on this one? Personally I disagree; I am interested in peoples opinions and perceptions but am happy to follow the crowd if I'm the only one)

The Questions: 3 questions on causes/ prevention

           “capability” question goes here (issue of those incapable of earning income vs free-riders)

2 on treatment/ solutions

           minimum wage question goes here

Is this accurate? Does everyone agree? If so, maybe we're ready to move forward with the exact questions and their wording... If you don't like what you see above, edit! :) Great work so far guys, this is going really well.

I disagree with no subjective questions, because it really limits the types of questions we can ask and I believe people's opinions are valid. I agree with your distribution of questions as well - no complaints there.

I think that the distribution of questions looks pretty good. I'll echo both your concerns about the lack of subjective questions, but that's unfortunately part of the problem with having such a small number of available questions; if we had more time or more questions available to us subjective questions would be the next logical step. Thanks Jennifer for summing up what we're looking at right now.

I agree with Jennifer and Jake that people's opinions and perceptions are valid, as they are also important parts of the research. I think we are on the right track. Thanks Jennifer for summing it up! :)

Echoing what's been said already I agree with the format and would like to see subjective questions [little more interesting].

Just to add, is it possible for someone a little more knowledgeable then myself to write down the questions we've agreed upon to date. I'm currently aware of the following: - Do you believe poverty reduction is the responsibility of private charity or government action? - Do you believe increasing the minimum wage in BC [to $12 as proposed by the NDP} will help to reduce the poverty level? I've added the NDP part only to make the question more relevant.

These are the only questions I believe have been generally agreed on. Let me know if i'm wrong.

I think there's been a discussion of a fourth question asking how affected the individual taking the survey is by poverty, and it was a multiple choice question submitted by Rawan near the end of the Possible Question thread. I haven't heard anything about a fifth question, do we have anything we want to end off with?

Are we going to be using that question?

An idea for another topic on poverty we could explore is if there is a level or homelessness/poverty that is acceptable for society? How many homeless people or impoverished people is alright in the eyes of society or the government? Just an idea, as eliminating poverty completely is next to impossible so having a more tangible goal could be a good idea.

I agree with both Trevor and Andre. For the fifth question, maybe we can ask one of the subjective questions proposed by Andre just to get the general idea about the public perception concerning poverty and to conclude the whole sets of questions. Since the number of questions are limited, I think that by having just one question about treatment/solutions should be enough.

Thanks Jennifer for summing up!

Do we have a concerted list of the five questions we want to pose then?

I compeltely agree with the topic distribution of the questions! But, i still think we should have maybe 1 subjective question, at least, similar to what RinYusuf just said about having a subjective question regarding public perception. Jennifer, Thank you soo much for summing up!

Just curious as I'm a bit confused...do we have 4 questions finalized yet? If we do, maybe we can add them to the summing up post. Is the fifth question going to be about the treatment/solutions thread?

I think 4 of the questions are finalized like what Jennifer have said at the beginning of the thread, and would we all agree that the fifth question is going to be a subjective question? Yes? No?

That sounds correct to me. I don't believe we actually discussed what the subjective question would be though. Were there some options we already considered that might work?

Yes that sounds great

Correct me if I'm wrong, but so far these are the questions we have come up with:

1)How does poverty affect you and your family? A) Greatly B)Slightly C)Not at all

2)Do you believe poverty reduction is the responsibility of private charity or government action?

3)Do you agree/disagree that increases in minimum wage is necessary for reducing poverty? A) yes B) No OR Do you believe increasing the minimum wage in BC [to $12 as proposed by the NDP} will help to reduce the poverty level?

...There are discussions going on in the other threads about other possible questions

Rawan I think your right about the above questions except I think we decided to split question 3 into two questions so now we'll have 4 questions to look like :

1. would you be in favor of a provincial wage increase? answer: a) yes b) no

2. do you think that a provincial wage increase will reduce or increase the overall poverty rate in the province? answer: a) increase b) decrease c) not make an impact

something along those lines.

Yea i think that is correct because we previously discussed how we were going to break the question down into 2

Hello everyone! Ok, so the assignment is due today in approximately 4 hours; as such, it seems we should all decide on our questions within this time frame. So just to sum up (correct me if I'm wrong), the following 4 are our FINAL questions?:

• • • Rawan, these are the questions submitted by you verbatim, along with Dalia's submission***:

1)How does poverty affect you and your family? A) Greatly B)Slightly C)Not at all

2)Do you believe poverty reduction is the responsibility of private charity or government action?'

3)Do you agree/disagree that increases in minimum wage is necessary for reducing poverty? A) yes B) No OR Do you believe increasing the minimum wage in BC [to $12 as proposed by the NDP} will help to reduce the poverty level?

4)Would you be in favor of a provincial wage increase? answer: a) yes b) no

5)Do you think that a provincial wage increase will reduce or increase the overall poverty rate in the province? answer: a) increase b) decrease c) not make an impact'

Is everone in agreement with this format?? If not, please make your contributions as needed.

Perfect! but for question 3 are we choosing one of them? if yes i prefer this one: Do you believe increasing the minimum wage in BC [to $12 as proposed by the NDP} will help to reduce the poverty level? because the 1st one is sort of answered in the 5th question

i also agree that 3 questions on wage is too much! question #3 is redundant if we're gonna stick with questions #4 and #5

Yes we'll choose one question for number 3. I prefer the first minimum wage question over the NDP question because the NDP is too specific and might be misleading to believe that $12 is the only option there is or that increasing the minimum wage will always reduce the poverty level.

I unfortunately disagree with the NDP question and prefer the first one.

also question 4 seems to be similar to question 3 so we should choose either or

I agree with Dalia, I think we should take off question number 4 and keep 3 and 5 for minimum wage.

Looks good. I think this sums it up.

Looks good. I think this sums our work up.

I think that 3 questions on min wage are too many... our focus is Poverty, not the minimum wage. I tried to finalize the first 4 questions in terms of wording. Feel free to edit this (PLEASE :), these are just my little ideas!

1)How does poverty DIRECTLY affect you and your family? A) Greatly B)Slightly C)Not at all 2)Do you believe poverty reduction is the responsibility of private charities, government action or private individuals? 3)Do you believe increasing the minimum wage in BC will help to reduce the poverty level? Yes or No 4)Would you be in favor of a provincial wage increase? Yes or No

5)How about something about satisfaction with the current level of poverty in BC?? Something like "how important to you is the issue of poverty in BC?" Very important, moderately important, neutral, moderately unimportant, very unimportant. OR "Do you think that the current number of people living in poverty in BC is acceptable?" yes or no

anyone have thoughts they can add??

1)How does poverty DIRECTLY affect you and your family? A) Greatly B)Slightly C)Not at all

2)Do you believe poverty reduction is the responsibility of private charities, government action or private individuals?

3)Do you believe increasing the minimum wage in BC will help to reduce the poverty level? Yes or No

4)Would you be in favor of a provincial wage increase? Yes or No

as for 5 i think : 5) Something like "how important to you is the issue of poverty in BC?" Very important, moderately important, neutral, moderately unimportant, very unimportant. rather than : "Do you think that the current number of people living in poverty in BC is acceptable?" yes or no

What does everyone else think

ya thats good Nadine!

as for question 5 i prefer "how important to you is the issue of poverty in BC?" because we will get a more accurate respond from the individuals we are surveying since i doubt that people actually know the current number of people living in poverty in BC

I also like the first question for number 5 because the second question assumes everyone already knows the number people living in poverty.

I think question 4 by itself is not really relevant to poverty in BC. "Would you be in favor of a provincial wage increase? Yes or No" Whether they answer YES or NO, it won't help us concerning the topic of poverty.

from what I understand question #3 is a follow up question to #4

but perhaps a fifth question that can replace #4 is: do you think that people's tax money should be used to reduce poverty in BC?

Sorry! I was typing my response and didn't see that others had added since I read the first post. Sorry to NadineAbdulHadi, the NDP part can stay, let's go with your vote for #3!

Hey guys, we do seem to be able to make a second thread, so I thought we could move the minimum wage discussions over to this one, as Andre mentioned to keep it a little less cluttered.

I think just to recap, we were talking about which direction we should move the minimum wage, and then a secondary question where we would ask what jurisdiction should be responsible for the wage increase. Is there anything we want to add on that?

One of the problems I've heard about the minimum wage is that it doesn't change with inflation, and what was once a generous minimum wage quickly becomes useless. That's actually what happened in British Columbia, where we had a high minimum wage at one point, but a decade of no increases made it worse for people and less able to support individuals. Maybe we could have a question asking either how often it should be raised, maybe something like:

How often do you believe the government (whichever they choose) should be changing the minimum wage? a) every year b) every five years c) every ten years) d) every twenty years e) never

Thoughts?

I agree with Trevor in response to the survey question regarding how often the government should revise the minimum wage. And to make the survey questions more organized, I think it is crucial for us to first ask how often the government should change the minimum wage, then we can proceed to the next question surveying the impact of raised/decreased/unchanged minimum wage as proposed by Andre. By organizing it this way, it would be easier for us to know how the trend of changing the minimum wage according to the inflation rate would affect the poverty reduction.

I think that having a question on Minimum wage is a great idea. I personally think, however, that we should try to limit questions about this aspect of poverty (the minimum wage) to just one question. While I like the idea of gathering peoples' opinions on the federal/ provincial aspect, we should perhaps try to focus our questions a bit. If we keep focus on just dealing with poverty in the lower mainland or just within BC, we'll probably find it a bit easier.

Poverty is such a broad topic and really we could go in so many interesting directions with it, but I do agree with JenniferMcGowan. I think because we are limited to five questions that we should try to keep our questions focus, concise and clear. I think there are some really great ideas and that we are on a good track. So maybe as JenniferMcGowan suggests either the Lower Mainland or BC...

I agree that we should keep our questions concise and clear, and I like Jennifer's idea of keeping our focus on dealing with poverty in one area, as federal/provincial as may be interesting but can make the question quite vague. Also, I think a question about minimum wage in relations to inflation is a great idea, and perhaps we could ask a question like "Do you agree/disagree that changes in minimum wage is necessary for reducing poverty?" a) Yes b) No

I agree with Jennifer's point in limiting our questions on minimum wage to just one question. Since we can only have 5 questions, I think we should try to cover as many aspects of poverty as possible. To add to Nicole's question, 'changes' can go in both directions. So perhaps we can ask a more direct question like "Do you agree/disagree that increases in minimum wage is necessary for reducing poverty? A) yes B) No

I think our questions should be clear and free from any subjective interpretation. I think it would be best if we avoid questions that reflect thoughts, believes, personal opinions etc...Rawan I like the question you proposed because it's simple and to the point which will hopefully produce more accurate results. If i might suggest we should also focus on a field, geographic location or when asking the question to make it more narrow. For example do you agree/disagree that increasing minimum wage is necessary for reducing poverty in British Columbia?

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're saying here... You don't want to ask people questions that reflect thoughts or beliefs but your question example asks for people's belief/ personal opinion about the effect of minimum wage on poverty. I agree with you about adding "British Columbia" to the question to narrow the scope a bit.

I like Rawan's question personally - as Hanak mentioned, it's simple, and to the point, which is what a survey question should be.

In response to Hanak, I do like what you're doing there with your question as well, but your question is completely opinion based and you don't want that. Care to clarify?

I think Hana is trying to simplify the questions by making them purely financial and institutional. Which I think is a good strategy towards creating clearer, simpler questions.

I completely agree with Jennifer! We should focus on poverty [and homelessness] in BC and maybe just focus even on the lower mainland. And we are going to be surveying people living for the most part in Vancouver, so it will be more accurate if we ask them questions that directly pertain to them.

We are on a good roll, lets keep it going :) I agree with everyone, lets keep it to Vancouver, keeping it focused will help us focus our five questions. I also agree with having 2-3 on causes/prevention and 2 on solutions/treatments. So then does this mean that we are stepping away from the personal initial question of "How does poverty affect you and your family?" A) Greatly B)Slightly C)Not at all

I also think that Hanakhalil suggestion of "do you agree/disagree that increasing minimum wage is necessary for reducing poverty in British Columbia?" is good.

I think that DaliaElramly raised a good point in that we define poor more specifically... the question " do you mean those with lower income? or homeless?" Maybe should just focus on poverty (also low-income, government assistance) since that is the original topic? Is trying to include homelessness too much for five questions? thoughts....?

I think sashia had a good suggestion. since we all seem to just be talking on low-income/government assisted people lets just do all our five questions on that.

here is a very rough definition of poor:

poor is relating to individuals or households having an income that is below average. These individuals are without enough income to provide adequate housing for themselves and/or their families and maybe supported by the government.

please make necessary changes .... these are just suggestions on the tables!

I also agree that "Do you agree/disagree that increasing minimum wage is necessary for reducing poverty in BC?" is good and should be one of our questions. It's very focused and to the point, and allows us to ask more questions about other aspects of poverty.

As for the definition of poverty, I think the second part of what Dalia just said is good. However just 'relating to individuals having an income below average' is a little too broad in my opinion. It should be people who are homeless or cannot provide adequate essentials for them/ their family.

Hello Everyone! So I think that we should start proposing our questions as it is due tomorrow. Sometimes it gets confusing to follow everyone's replies, so maybe lets posts the questions we feel are best here at the bottom, so it is all located in one area....?

Hey Sashia check out the "summing up" thread. We're trying to sum up the questions over there :)

Hello everyone. As a possible question we might want to add to our survey, what do we think about something like asking 'do you believe that poverty reduction is the responsibility of private charity, or government assistance?'

The idea would be to look at how people believe the issue should be resolved, and how that could effect public policy regarding homelessness.

That's an excellent question, although I think that it needs another variable for those who believe that poverty reduction is something that should be left to the impoverished (there are people like that, sadly enough).

Maybe have two questions for it:

1.Do you believe that assistance is necessary to reduce poverty? a. Yes b. No

2.do you believe that poverty reduction is the responsibility of private charity, or government assistance? a.Private charity b.Government assistance c.Not applicable

Just looking at the questions you've posed in response, would it be possible to have a couple of branched off questions based on the responses to your first question? Looking at policies that currently do exist, do we want to ask questions about whether individuals agree with income or housing assistance? Maybe something along the lines of 1a: How strongly do you agree with the creation of subsidized housing? a)strongly agree b)agree c)neither agree nor disagree d)disagree e)strongly disagree

1b: Do you agree or disagree with income assistance for those under the Low Income Cut-off? a)agree b)disagree

Speaking to Ekateryna's point, it may be useful to break the concept of government assistance into seperate categories of those able earners and disadvantaged earners (by this I mean, those who fall within the lower-income earning bracket and are disabled/otherwise mentally incapable of earning their utmost potential). We could pose a question regarding to what degree respondents believe government assistance is warranted. I say this, because people may carry a bias/stigma against welfare recipients who are physically/mentally capable of earning their wages, but are too 'lazy' to do so. By breaking the concept down, we eliminate the possibility for bias to mar their responses. The question we could pose is:

"To what extent do you believe provincial governments are responsible for financially compensating incapable low-income earners": a.) much intervention b.) some intervention c.) no intervention

Regarding government assistance, we could also add another question "In terms of the amount of money that is spent on assistance to the under privileged, do you think we are spending too much, too little, or about the right amount? " and then a more detailed second part: "Why do you thin that?"

I like the suggestion that EkaterynaBaranovskaya made about breaking it into two questions, in addition I also agree with JenniferSamuel, I think that it would be good to clarify those who should receive assistance, to eliminate bias/stigma, as best as possible. Maybe we provide a brief sentence that would include a description of who would receive assistance and then we ask EkaterynaBaranovskaya's questions...? or Maybe is JennSamuel's questions a third? or is should incorporate it in with the first suggestion of EkaterynaBaranovskaya? What do you all think?

I like the suggestion that has been made by EkaterynaBaranovskaya about taking into consideration the bias/stigma against welfare where people might not be willing to help those that are capable but too lazy to do so. by eliminating this stigma we will be more capable of getting better and more detailed answers.

The point that Ekateryna made is excellent on having that third variable. Because there are many people that don’t think we should even assist in reducing poverty from the first place!

Having read the above threads ... i feel like we’re concentrating more on government assisted people more than the homeless. We cant group these two groups together, we should differentiate those on welfare, or who live in subsidized housing and those who are homeless. It is important to not overlap the two.

I also like Ekateryna's incorporation of a third variable - I think it adds depth to the question. I also agree with Dalia's point that the distinction between those who are homeless and those who are on welfare (i.e. subsidized housing) must be made obvious. Clearly, they are two seperate entities in themselves and must be addressed as such - considering that some survey respondents may have the tendency to be biased against one group or the other. It might also help to clarify with a follow-up question:

"Do you believe low-income earners should recieve government assistance?" A.) YES B.) NO C.) MAYBE

"If YES,then what form of government assistance do you deem is appropriate?": A.) education assistance B.) Welfare cheques C.) childcare funding

I agree with you. Trevors question is excellent, but the way you cut it down into two questions with specific answers makes it less vague and easier to gather and set up information and data for.

Oh, I should have mentioned that it wouldn't be a stand-alone question, because you're both right that there's definitely some vagueness to how I described it, and there's a whole series of follow-up questions that could be created just from there. Looking at it, you could also go into discussing what kind of private charities or whether tax increases would be acceptable to pay for government assistance. I just thought it would be a good basic question that has the ability to spawn more questions.

First question is very good [just thought i'd agree with everyone]. I was wondering what you guys thought about a question pertaining to the minimum wage such as, "To what degree do you believe increasing the minimum wage serves to help the poor?" You could then present it as a scale perhaps, "Help a lot, Help a little, Negligible, Hinder a little, Hinder a lot" or just yes or no?

I really like the idea of discussing the minimum wage, especially in light of how often its being talked about in the media lately. I like the idea of a scale for that sort of question, but is there any way we could link it to asking about whether the minimum wage should be set by the provinces, or as a uniform federal minimum?

The minimum wage is a great topic regarding poverty, so to tackle it I think we need more than one question. We definitely need to get people's opinions on whether the minimum wage hurts or helps the poor. We could phrase it by asking "Do you think the minimum wage should be a) much lower b) a little lower c) same d) a little higher e) much higher" or both ways.

As far as provincial or federal, we could do a follow up by asking "If you think the minimum wage should be changed, do you believe it should be changed for a) all of Canada b) your province c) your municipality ?"

Also, this minimum wage thing should probably be in a new thread, to make the discussion a little more organized/cleaner. Does anyone know how to do that?

I agree that Trevor's question is quite good, and also agree with the fact that it would be better as a two-part question. In response to Andre, I unfortunately think we're only allowed this one thread to work with, which is unfortunate.

In response to the topic of minimum wage, perhaps we could also ask something along the lines of "do you think the amount of minimum wage and its variation across provinces directly is responsible for varying levels of poverty?" or something along those lines. I know it's poorly worded, but just an idea.

Since there are so many factors that cause different levels of poverty from province to province, I think the question should be something along the lines of "how impactful is the minimum wage and its variation across provinces on the level of poverty in each province"? a) very high b) somewhat high etc... Simple yes or no questions can make it seem like there's only one thing (minimum wage in this case) that causes poverty.

I like the idea of adding the "provincial or federal" dimension to the question and, echoing what Jake said, it would be interesting to see what people thought regarding the correlation between each province's level of poverty and its minimum wage though it might simply be the same as asking if they thought raising the minimum wage hurts or helps. Its difficult to see someone saying "I believe we need to raise the minimum wage to help the poor," and then saying, "but i don't think there's a relation between the minimum wage and reducing poverty from province to province."

I agree with everyone so far that incorporating a federal/provincial element opens the question up to greater dialogue. However, I think Patrick has a good point (if I'm interpreting it correctly) that the federal/provincial element may render the question somewhat vague and off-directional. What I mean by this is that we could pose a question that speaks personally to the respondent's opinion of wage increase in relation to poverty reducement. Maybe we could narrow it down a bit, while still retaining the dual aspect, as in:

"Would you be personally in favour of a provincial wage increase if such a measure would reduce the overall poverty rate in the province?"

a.) Yes b.) No c.) Maybe d.) I don't know

Haha! Only thing I don't like about the question is that it equates a wage increase with reducing the poverty rate whereas what I was hoping to find out [and this comes down to what you're interested in] was whether people already believed that increasing the minimum wage helped reducing poverty. I think if increasing the min wage guaranteed a lower poverty level it would be nowhere near as controversial a topic.

I agree with Patrick. That question that Jennifer brought up is indicating that raising the provincial wage does reduce the overall poverty rate in the province. However, we're not sure if that is a guaranteed fact.

i also agree with Patrick and Rawan. we dont want to lead people. most people would assume that increasing the min. wage would help the poor ... but that is not the case it actually makes it harder to find employment, particularly for the most vulnerable job-seekers.

and by the poor ... do you mean those with lower income? or homeless? ... we got to define the term or be more specific.

It seems my assessment was not clearly worded and I see that now. Speaking to Dalia's point - just as a point of clarification and curiosity - is your assessment that increasing the minimum wage actually makes it harder to find employment, particularly for the most vulnerable job-seekers based on empirical research?

And although 'poor' was not mentioned in the first posting, I suppose I referring to those individuals who fall below the national poverty line.

Is the national poverty line the measurement we want to use? Within that one line, there's also the Low Income Cut-off, which is measured before and after taxation, and thus provides different statistics. Do we want to specify which measurement we mean, or just the national poverty line in general?

Yes Jennifer thats what my assessment is ... so I suggest instead of leading people in which i think the below question does: "Would you be personally in favour of a provincial wage increase if such a measure would reduce the overall poverty rate in the province?"

maybe we can instead ask two separate questions.

1. would you be in favor of a provincial wage increase?

answer: a) yes b) no

2. do you think that a provincial wage increase will reduce or increase the overall poverty rate in the province?

and the poor ... was mentioned in another post sorry for the confusion ... but i define poor in the other post.

answer: a) increase b) decrease c) not make an impact

something along those lines.

I agree with DaliaElramly in the sense that we are breaking down the question into two parts, rather than having one very long question. Also, it would also get opinions regarding whether or not people see the need for increasing minimum wage, regardless of how it will improve the overall poverty line rate in the province, and then the next question will be on what they think the impact would be.

Should the first question of starting the survey be more personal so we can get an idea of how poverty affects people? Perhaps a question like "How does poverty affect you and your family?" A) Greatly B)Slightly C)Not at all

After this question we can go into a broader question such as "If the government could do one more thing to reduce poverty in the province, what should it be?" Then list a few choices to choose from.

I like the idea of being somewhat personal at the beginning... because then we know where the surveyed are coming from... whether they are personally effected or not. this could also let us see their bias's

I agree with Rawan that we should ask more personal question in the beginning, and later getting into more in-depth questions. However, I think there can be a lot of different choices for Rawan's second question. We could probably narrow it down and ask a question about a particular policy and whether people are satisfied with the policy or not?

I like Rawan's idea of asking a personal question at the start of the survey - I think it contributes to making the survey that much more personal and meaningful to the respondents (i.e. they will get much more out of/be more inclined to continue with the remainder of the survey. However, I also agree with Nicole's point that the second part of the proposal is much too open-ended and leaves the entire question open to endless possibilities. I think Nicole has the right idea of posing a single opinion question and asking the respondents their 'YES' 'NO' response instead.

Another suggestion could be :

"Would you be willing to pay more in taxes to pay for more the government to be able to spend more to help the poor?"

I understand that Rawan's second question: "If the government could do one more thing to reduce poverty in the province what could it be? maybe opened ended, but I would disagree with Nicole and JenniferS, with limiting it to either a specific policy or a yes or no answer. I propose that we provide a few things to pick from and leave an open line labelled "other" for them to provide further reasons, as there may be some new ideas to reduce poverty. (Because if we are always doing the same things, then we can only expect the same results...)

We should be careful in choosing our five questions, is there any particular quality we want to measure?

Some possibilities are:

(1) Awareness of Poverty and Homelessness in Vancouver/Lower Mainland

(2) Feelings of personal responsibility (as in do they donate themselves, etc)

(3) Perception of the causes of Poverty and Homelessness in Vancouver/Lower Mainland

(4) Opinions of government Aid vs. Private Charity to aid the impoverished

We could ask questions to go towards this and many more groups, but I was wondering if anyone wanted to go towards a particular goal with our questions.

I agree that we might want to focus the questions a bit on some aspect of poverty. Remember, we only have 5! Of the above 4 choices, personally I'd like to focus on perceptions of the causes of Poverty and Homelessness in the Vancouver. Anyone else?

I like Jennifer's idea of focusing the question on the perceptions of the causes of poverty and homelessness in the Lower Mainland. Perhaps by incorporating an economic element to give the question more focused direction, we can focus the question on respondent's opinions towards a poverty reduction plan. As an example:

"Would you be willing to support a poverty reduction plan that includes provisions for income assistance for low-income earners?"

a.) Yes b.) No c.) Don't know

I like the idea presented by Jennifer McGowan on focusing our questions on the perceptions of the causes of poverty and homelessness. That seems like a really interesting direction to take the questioning, and moves away from the expected questions of what people believe should be done to fix the problem. It would be fascinating to see what people think should be done to prevent the issue from occurring to begin with.

I agree with you all as well in regards to framing the questions that will get the preceptions of the causes of poverty and homelessness, but I am also wondering if we focus only in vancouver, or do we broaden it to include the entire province?

I also agree with both Jennifer Samuels and Trevor, maybe it would be good to incorporate both a prevention question and also a possible solution question. Is this plausible? or too much?

I don't think it would be too hard to add a prevention and a solution question, the only concern is that we only get five questions, and that would be two, so it would be hard to get too much more detailed information on any other topic if that's how we've chosen to do this.

Yeah, 5 questions is not much to work with.

I do like Jenn S's idea of a question about a poverty reduction plan, and I definitely think we should focus one question on measuring 3) which Ekateryna suggested.

If we were to incorporate a poverty reduction plan into our question, I wonder if we would need to state the specifics of what this would entail (considering our respondents may want to satisfy their curiosity as to how/why such a plan may succeed).

For instance, should we include a follow-up question such as: "Which method of a poverty reduction plan would be most favoured by you?" A.) Increased provincial minimum wage B.) Increased provincial welfare payments C.) Decreased federal income taxation for those who fall below the national poverty line

(***I've just included a provincial/federal element here, but not too sure whether it's necessary...any thoughts?***)

Definitely a good idea with narrowing things down and framing the questions, just so we can all agree to which direction we are headed. Seems like we're all on the same page. We could definitely focus on Vancouver, seeing as most of the people being surveyed will be either from Vancouver or currently living here, hence they will have more insight to the matter.

I completely agree with you Christina about focusing on Vancouver. That way we can get more insight. Also, i think that we should definatly have a question regarding government assistance

I think focusing on Vancouver is a great idea for all the reasons previously stated. I prefer looking at what people think are good solutions to the problems that face the city's poor [close to #2 and #4 in Ekateryna's list of possibilities] so if we could have 3 questions on prevention and 2 on treatment I think everyone would get what they wanted out of the survey.

I also like Jennifer's idea. Focusing on the perceptions of the causes of poverty and homelessness in Vancouver would be a great starting point. I think it'd be also interesting to incorporate some elements from question #2 or #4 to see people's opinions about poverty reduction plan.

I agree with focusing our questions on Vancouver only. Let's see how many questions we think should be devoted to each "measure". I think we should have 3 on causes/prevention and 2 on fixing/treatment (where we would include one minimum wage question which we discussed in the other thread). State how you guys think the questions should be divided so we can get a general consensus on what we all want.

Opinions of government Aid vs. Private Charity to aid the impoverished ... or the feeling of responsibility

I definetly agree with focusing on Vancouver, this would be easier since different factors effect different cities and the local government deals with poverty differently in other cities. I also agree with rawan on having 3 on causes/prevention and 2 on fixing/treatment

focusing on vancouver makes a lot of sense and the results will be more credible this way.I second Rawan and Dalia 3 causes/prevention and 2 fixing/treatment this way the survey will be more comprehensive and expressive.

let's also have a very clear causal relation because this will be the bases for all the questions. Just so we don't divert

I think focusing on Vancouver specifically is a great idea because that way answers will be more credible and less general.

At the expense of sounding too repetitive, I agree with everyone above that focusing on Vancouver is the most ideal solution, thereby narrowing the breadth of our sample audience. This is significant, in that while it is important to be broad when generating a research question, it is also important to conceive a concise question that has a singular focus (the entire Lower Mainland may be too broad and diverse when it comes to issues of homelessness and poverty). I also agree with Hana's point that the results with a more centered focus will be more comprehensive and meaningful.