Our group’s main purpose was to research powerlessness and how it affects those around us, whether it be at school, at home, or at work. Our goal as a group was to raise awareness for those in the United States who suffer from things that can create the feeling of being powerless. For my individual topic in the group project, I chose to do Homelessness simply because this is a major issue in society. It is considered an issue due to the rising numbers, and the diversity of individuals who play an important role in it. Homelessness can be caused by many different things such as debt, substance abuse, and/or disabilities and millions suffer from this everyday. Disabled veterans make up a majority of the United States’ population of homeless people, and young adults follow close behind because of substance abuse. In the article "Homeless Youth" by Cherese Cartlidge, she discusses what it means to be homeless, and what young homeless people go through living in certain conditions and how they may have ended up they way they have. On page ten, line seven, Cartlidge states, "Pediatrician Randy Christensen, who provides health care to homeless youth, says, “I often saw kids who were homeless because their families were fragmented, destitute, traveling from one crime-ridden apartment to another, ravaged by domestic violence and drug abuse.” Even though substance abuse is a big cause in homelessness from people of all ages, it does not necessarily mean they are the ones doing the drugs or drinking. Millions go through the pain of watching their loved ones make mistakes and poor decisions that don't just affect them, but also those around them. Many youth are homeless because of things such as not having a positive influence. Their parents may not be stable enough to take care of them in which some cases may cause them to starve, lose a home, or even a loved one because of the drugs or alcohol usage.
My topic of Homelessness ties into the group’s main topic of Powerlessness because when someone becomes homeless, they have no power over their living conditions, as well as their mental state of mind, and physical appearance. Because they may not have any power or control over their lives, they may see crime as their last option of survival.
The homeless are not respected and are mistreated quite often because they are misunderstood by those who are more fortunate. It is assumed that most homeless people are just regular people who dress up because of their desperation for money. By dressing up, these people think they can take advantage of others and receive free money and/or resources such as food and sometimes even clothes.
In the article, “Supportive Housing for Chronically Homeless individuals: Challenges and Opportunities for Providers in Chicago, USA”, this article revolves around the chronically homeless, the housing providers, and what experiences they have in the supportive housing environment. “Their long histories of homelessness, coupled with psychiatric and substance use disorders and complicated, untreated health issues, make the chronically homeless a difficult population to engage in housing programs” (Introduction 5). The providers are people who maintain jobs in these supportive housing facilities. Their jobs include helping those who suffer from mental illnesses and/or substance abuse. In other words, their jobs are to help the “Chronically homeless”. The job may seem easy, however it is difficult because of things such as severe anxiety or hallucinations that the homeless might face from the drugs previously used. Funding is another problem providers face according to the author and with low supply, and high demands, the providers’ job becomes much more challenging.
During our research, my group and I developed a survey of sixty-seven questions, in which around twenty of these questions related to how people feel about the homeless and their impact on society. While doing our own independent research, we used scholarly articles because they are most accurate. Our group took four articles for each individual topic and put them together so it could lead up to the main topic. We used our research that we collected independently to help us create our questions. The questions that were asked contained answer choices that ranged from agreement or disagreement to yes or no.
Once we conducted our survey, we published it and advertised it on social media, such as Instagram, Facebook, and the College of Coastal Georgia app. We used social media as our advertising go-to because we felt it was a good way to get the word out and to have more of a diverse number of participants instead of just students from around our school campus. By using social media, our group believed that if we have a more diverse amount of people participate, we can have a more diverse amount of answers for each question. As the popular saying goes, “ The more, the merrier”.
Doing our survey has not only brought us together as a group, but it has also allowed us to explore the different topics we researched, and how it all can tie together while being so different.
Our main research goal was to raise awareness for those who have and continue to feel powerlessness under different circumstances. Our statistical goal for our survey was to have at least twenty to thirty people participate. Within the two weeks we had our survey open to the public, we had forty-one participants start the survey, but only thirty-four finished. We as a group felt very proud to have met our goal.
Overall, this research has helped bring our group together and helped us see the importance of each topic. For future reference and even better results, we could advertise our survey on more social media platforms as well as more in person encouragement in order to help spread the word of the importance of not only our survey, but the topics covered by our survey in general. By raising awareness, we could help possibly change people’s views and intake on powerlessness and those who are vulnerable.
Our results were very diverse. We had forty-one participants, but only thirty-four completed the entire thing. Thirty-nine participants were classified as U.S. citizens and two were not.. Twenty-six of our participants were White/Caucasian, two were Hispanic, four were Black/African American, and one was Asian/Pacific Islander, and one had more than one ethnicity. We had thirty-four participants give us their gender, twenty-four females, and ten males. The main ages ranged between eighteen and twenty-four. The most frequent answer about the marital status was never married and single. Majority had jobs, which labeled them as a part-time student and employee. Over half of our participants felt supportive of raising awareness over those who suffer from powerlessness, as well as the will to help them if at all physically possible. A vast majority of our answers came from people who were not part of College of Coastal Georgia.
It was nice to see that we had met our goal, however I believe we could have had more people participate. We had a decent amount of data, but we had a few that did not finish the survey, therefore we did not receive a full, fair amount of data for certain questions. Despite all of their answers being anonymous, some did not seem comfortable about answering certain questions, such as their sexual orientation. Limitation wise, we could have advertised a bit more, especially encouraging people face to face. To me, verbal encouragement may be the best kind of encouragement because the person you're engaging with can listen to your set tone of voice, as well as your words. Conversating with someone over a phone is not the same as it is in person; there is a big difference. By having so many questions on our survey, I think we lost the interest of some participants and that is why we have surveys that are not fully completed.
Quinn, Katherine, et al. “Supportive Housing for Chronically Homeless Individuals: Challenges and Opportunities for Providers in Chicago, USA.” Health & Social Care in the Community, vol. 26, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. e31–e38. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/hsc.12467.
Cartlidge, Cherese. Homeless Youth. ReferencePoint Press, 2017. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=1718786&site=eds-live&scope=site.