Possible question

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...)