The main research question in this study is: How many homeless people live in Corpus Christi, TX, and what underlying factors contribute to this state? Answering this question means that the actual situation of homelessness in Corpus Christi, Texas, will be revealed. It is essential to know the number of homeless people in this region for many reasons. Firstly, knowing the number of homeless people in Corpus Christi will make the relevant authorities to understand how dire the issue of homelessness is. Therefore, this will be important in the aspect of planning. Almost every city authority, Texas included, has the responsibility of formulating policies aimed at social issues.
Concerning the question of homelessness, the relevant authorities commonly build homes for the homeless. Therefore, if they are aware of the number of homeless people, they will construct facilities that accommodate the accurate number of homeless people. Most of the time, authorities have constructed facilities that are designed to accommodate homeless people, but people still find several people sleeping on the streets. Likely, relevant authorities have not been constructing these facilities with an accurate number of people in mind.
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Secondly, answering the research question leads to an understanding of the reasons why people become homeless. The most prominent factors that have variously been stated include drug abuse or family breakdown. However, some of these reasons could be too regional; problems faced by people in Corpus Christi may not be similar to those faced by people living in other parts of the country. Therefore, answering this question provides an opportunity for establishing context-specific reasons, and in this light, problems faced specifically by people living in Corpus Christi. Most of the time, general solutions do not work in cases that need specific solutions. Secondly, understanding the underlying problems paves the way for implementing the most appropriate mitigation or intervention strategies. If the particular reasons are known, then ways can be found of addressing those problems that lead to homelessness, while at the same time solving the real problem. If prevention strategies are put into place, then the number of homeless individuals in the future can reduce, and that means resources will be saved to address other social problems.
Ethical Considerations
First, ethics approval will be needed from the relevant authorities. For example, before interviewing people in facilities put up for the homeless, permission will have to be sought from the management of those facilities. Secondly, conducting surveys on the streets can be particularly challenging, especially when I need to interview homeless individuals. I will need to seek permission from them before talking to them. Secondly, I will need to assure them of their privacy and confidentiality of their information (Sobočan, Bertotti, & Strom-Gottfried, 2019). Most homeless people will be suspicious because they commonly face a rough time with law enforcement agencies. Since this research will only be a survey aimed at knowing the number of homeless people and the various reasons that cause such a state, there will be no need to record personal information such as names, or identification details. Common ethical dilemmas in this kind of research are when a researcher finds a homeless individual involved in an illegal act or engaged in behaviors that are potentially damaging (Sandu & Frunza, 2018). For example, a homeless individual could be using illegal drugs and substances that could be harmful to their health. Therefore, in that case, you may be divided between reporting the matter to the relevant authorities and concealing the individual’s identity.
Methodology
The research will use a mixed-methods approach to collect data. By mixed methods, it means that the study will employ both quantitative and qualitative methods (Schoonenboom, & Johnson, 2017). The quantitative method will be in the form of a survey, especially in establishing the number of homeless individuals. To know the number of people, I will have to walk around Corpus Christi, counting all the homeless people I can spot. While doing the counting, I will also ask a random number of homeless individuals probably, 100 of them of the reasons that caused them to sleep on the streets. Some of the advantages of field surveys include getting accurate and detailed information as well as coming up with context-specific information as it is evident in Quigley et al. (2001) study that analyzes the homeless situation in California and uses field survey to gather information. It is also likely that on some occasions, some of the homeless individuals may be hostile, and some may refuse to talk. Therefore, in such cases, I will only count them, and through observation, aspects such as drug abuse and mental illness can be recorded.
Qualitative methods of collecting information will be through the use of secondary sources such as magazines, books, journals, and other credible websites. Websites that have extensions of .org or .edu could have valuable information regarding the population under focus. The websites will be scanned and screened to ensure authenticity and approval to ensure they meet academic standards. Information published must be by credible authors. Magazines or newspapers from the region could be the most valuable sources of information because the authors must have identified the problem as region-specific and gathered information about the homeless before writing. Therefore, these newspapers can be important in comparing the real figures of the homeless people as well as the underlying reasons gathered on the ground with the information published. Books and journals will provide a background to the study, especially in comparing the state of homelessness in Corpus Christi with that of other regions in the country. An example being the study by Williams (2017), which analyzed politics surrounding homelessness in America. Such a comparison will be important because it will help to rate whether the homelessness situation in Corpus Christi is dire or not. The websites to be used will be specific, and this means the websites to be selected will be those of organizations that have statistics of the specific state of homeless in Corpus Christi TX and other valuable information that can be used. Therefore, the mixed methods approach will be valuable in analyzing the situation on the ground and then comparing it with the qualitative sources that have information concerning the same issue.
References
Quigley, J. M., Raphael, S., & Smolensky, E. (2001). Homeless in America, homeless in California. Review of Economics and Statistics, 83 (1), 37-51.
Sandu, A. E., & Frunza, A. E. (2018). Ethical issues in social work practice . Information Science Reference/IGI Global.
Schoonenboom, J., & Johnson, R. B. (2017). How to construct a mixed methods research design. KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie , 69 (2), 107-131.
Sobočan, A. M., Bertotti, T., & Strom-Gottfried, K. (2019). Ethical considerations in social work research. European Journal of Social Work , 22 (5), 805-818.
Williams, J. (2017). The politics of homelessness in the United States. Oxford Handbooks Online , 1.
