Sash

The first question I asked in my survey was the age of the participant. I did this to gain an understanding of the background of the person answering my survey. It was also to give me the opportunity to see if there is a link between someone's age and their attitudes on homelessness.

As can be seen in the results, I had people of most ages respond to my survey, with majority being in the 18-20 category.

“What is your gender” was the second question of my survey. Similar to the first question, it was a question to gain further background information on the participant to see if their was a link between their answers and rather than their age, their gender. As can be seen I gained a good mixture between males and females answering my survey, with slightly more males participating.

Once again, this question was to gain background information on the participant. It could help me link attitudes and opinions with their place of residence. Seven out of the 18 responses can be seen to the left. It shows that people of many different towns and cities responded to the survey and means that I will be able to makes links between attitudes if similar opinions are prevalent within the responses of participants from Thirsk.

For this question, I found out that just under three quarters of respondents feel the government should be doing more to combat homelessness. I did this to gain knowledge of if the participant thought that was some sort of issue surrounding homelessness and to understand perhaps who they thought it was. As can be seen from the results this might mean that the majority of the participants do think homelessness is a problem and it is not being helped by underwhelming response form the government.

I asked this question to gain an outright view on whether anything about homeless is good. As I expected the majority of respondents saw nothing at all postive about being homelessness. This question provided me with further evidence to suggest that homelessness is a something that the public are not happy about and to link back to the previous question; the public also feels the government should be doing more.

This question was asked to gain further background information of the particpants. From these responses I would then be able to notice if people did, or did not feel homelessness is a problem, based on if they did, or did not know someone that is homeless. The responses showed that some of the people that don’t know anyone that is homeless, still fell that the government should be doing something more to combat the issue. Also from the results; I was able to see that I had an even mixture of people that know and don’t know someone that is homeless. This provides me with the proof that my survey is not biased and can provide me with valuable information.

From this question I wanted to see if their was a connection between people not thinking the government does enough to combat homelessness and not knowing the services available. Instead I found out that the respondents are fully aware of the services available including: the council, friends, family and SASH. Instead if with this they feel the government is still not doing enough. This could mean that homelessness is a rising problem and there are too many people for these services to cope with. Alternatively, it could mean that these services are doing their job effectively and need improving or restructured.

This question was asked to give me a definitive answer, whilst the respondent would also be having to explain their reasoning. From this question I would also be able to see if the people who thought that there are positives to homelessness, still have an overall negative opinion of it. As can be seen in the results I was able to satisfy this curiosity, with every answer stating how much of a horrible situation homelessness is.

This question was asked to show how serious my respondents were on their concerns, regarding homelessness. As can be seen the majority of people would not give a room to a homeless person. It should be noted that throughout the survey the majority of answers stated the homeless people needed help, as it is a dire situation and that their no positives about being homeless. However as some of the answers show, this question could link to the fact that whilst not wanting to personally help, this could be their reasoning for wanting the government to do more, this is because many of the respondents feel it is not their(the respondents) responsibility.

The final question was asked as a follow on to the previous question. With the possibility of many not choosing not to let a homeless person stay in their house, I thought it would be interesting to see where the respondent would go if they were in such a situation. With the majority choosing to go to a friend or family members house it is clear to see from these results the reason why many people do end up on the streets. People are mostly, only willing to help friends, so if you have fallen out with these people and have no family, you are most likely to end up on the streets. From this information I am also able to see how vital is that homeless charity's receive more funding to help these people in need when they have no friends or family to go to.