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The Relationship of Homelessness to Public Opinion about Homelessness in the City of San Francisco, California

Dissertation
2024

Repository

Description

This quantitative correlational study examined the relationship between homelessness and public opinion within the City of San Francisco. Specifically, this study identified whether changes in the number of homeless persons, as recorded in Point-in-Time counts, influence public perceptions of homelessness and public safety. The study was grounded in social constructionism and social problem theory, which explore how societal perceptions and narratives, as well as cultural and political processes, shape understanding of and responses to homelessness. The primary research question investigated the alignment, or lack thereof, between public perceptions and reported data, which is an important element for informing the development of interventions. The research investigated secondary data that included both Point-in-Time counts of homeless persons and the City Survey of San Francisco residents. Spearman’s Rho correlation, chosen for its suitability with ordinal and non-normally distributed data, assessed the strength and direction of relationships between homelessness statistics and public opinion trends. The results bring a new understanding of the relationship between homeless statistics and public perceptions.
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Record Data:

Program :
  • Doctor of Education
Location :
  • CBE
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