Week 7 – Methodology – Knowledge Integration and Project Planning: Data, Inequality and Society (2022-2023)

I have come to the conclusion, after completing the majority of my intensives and finishing off a couple of written assessments, that I love to engage with qualitative data. I have been struggling with some of my more quantitative courses, and I have found myself more weary of approaching research methods of that nature.

If I were to take a more quantitative approach, I would need to spend more time engaging with databases on Python. I’m still very intimidated by the data cleaning process which makes it difficult to do anything meaningful with the data. Regardless of the direction I go, I know I want to do descriptive or correlational research. I think when it comes to homelessness it is important to look at descriptive data to ensure that the proposed assistance is in-line with the needs of the population. Solutions needs to be more than just shelter.

I think this is relevant to my topic of widows who are sleeping rough/are homeless because they are not being written into programs or policies yet. Once there is more data on the challenges and desires of these women, I think it will become a lot easier to provide support. My plan for the coming weeks is to look at what methodology is currently being used to assess the demographics, needs, and challenges of homelessness. From there I can narrow down my scope and make sure that the target population of my project will still be captured by the methods of my choosing.