What we heard from you:

1. What we heard from you: Reviews by International Experts in Living Conditions Research

2. General remarks on Q’aire • Focus on problematic living cond. • Missing issues: poverty, exclusion, working conditions, material living standards • Reduce redundancy • Improve N-S comparability • Use European indicators: OECD, Nordic, ECHP, Norbalt, Euromodule, ISSP, WVS, ILO…

3. General remarks • Develop & add new complementary indicators to capture problems related to transitory/local social/ economic welfare problems encountered b indigenous populations • Reduce background data on ethnic identity, language, education, family, or use additional paper/pencil Q’aires

4. General comments • Regarding concern about not doing anything unique – not our intent • Internationally (N/S) comparable section • Housing, employment, income, health, family, education • Unique Arctic section • Traditional skills, language, religion, activities, family nearby • What makes people happier in settlements? • What makes people happier in the city? • Importance placed on Arctic elements

5. Technical Matters • One shared database available to all? • Concerted common reporting? Who coordinates the database? • No open-ended questions! • Satisfaction scales require 5-10 pts. (0-10) • Use standardized questions/response categories, when possible • Much more remains to be done, Further conceptualization as well as coordination • Restart: intense work with small research group.

6. General comments • 1st impression: complicated project • 2nd impression: more complicated! • Not just a usual level of living conditions survey: also hh prod., lifestyles, spiritual life, ethnographic study, int’l comparative, statistical study, funding demand driven • Needs to be more focused based on priorities – decisions made before cuts

7. General comments • Q’s with frequency response categories are not sufficiently precise (eg Q.A8) • Organization: you might bring information from other parts of Q’aire forward to hh section • Anticipate criticism: • Representative sample? • Use internationally validated questions • Survey needs to speak to governments: poverty, suicide, alcoholism, cultural preservation

8. General comments • To meet time constraints, consider cutting questions for which there are already aggregate data • Condense activity and importance items into one question each

9. Family • Departs more than the other sections from well-known LC surveys. • Names • Subsistence economy • Question if it will yield what you need • Subsistence section – doesn’t look at hh’s as givers. HH map isn’t best vehicle to get information. Y/N not sufficient. • Also misses current information: eg current employment, marriage status, total hh income

10. Family • A2: Don’t understand intent of question. (relatives in comm.) • A9: ? Value (How large a part does F. • Subjective WB questions missing: family life • Missed information on social networks (ie friends)

11. Family • You are inventing a new reporting period: 12 months. You need to specify volume of employment over that time (eg FTE months ILO categories) • What about education and unemployment in the hh chart?

12. Background • Review context: need to cut by a factor of 5. • Identified main themes and suggest cuts/streamlining to meet time goal. • Profile that keeps variables that have policy significance • Continuation of part A

13. Background: mobility • Mobility: What are appropriate reference points? • Place names: how translate into something comparable over Arctic and with the south? (eg size, type – perhaps incorporating mobile reference point). • Saami questions: a lot of circularity: father, mother. In between Q’s to R. Family cohesion Q. loaded. Economic hardship Q could be asked of everyone.

14. Background: mobility • Overlap in life migration and being away from home during course of year. • Could reduce details • Moving Q’s: close Q’s based on pretest results. • Take into account choices: are people being pushed as well as pulled? • What about accommodating people living nomadic lifestyle in moving Q’s?

15. Background: language • Special to this survey. You might have table format to simplify. • What about other language in your area? Bilingual ability=choice • Use of language: important, but choice factor should be incorporated • Access services: do people want to do this?

16. Background: education • Gender bias • Lack of herding items • Reference: children’s interest. Instead, aim at perceived importance • Overlap with lifestyle Q’s • Look at int’l surveys: highest level of R, mother, father. Can streamline to minimize circularity of Q’s for each level. • Pre-school Q may be important as well

17. Background: education • Education language – maybe one Q. • Financial aid – not important in all areas • Parental support – important contextual variable • Q on importance of higher educ. – parallel Q on traditional educ.

18. Background: education • Theme: are lifestyle choices forced or voluntary? • Competency in indigenous knowledge and in surrounding context

19. Lifestyle • What is being met by lifestyle? Work, religion, health…. • Split it up in separate sections: activities, outlook on life, health • Q’s about work: reduce to 1 closed-ended question on work pattern • Participation in cultural life: list activities mixing spheres with freq. categories: regularly, sometimes, never.

20. Lifestyle- Saami perspective • What if there are no movies available? “No” means different things. • Many questions aren’t relevant • Options on conception of nature inadequate • Spirituality Q’s – some not really relevant

21. Health • Smoking and drinking: mix into list to reduce response bias • Missing major question on long-standing illness, permanent handicap – small additional questions. • List of illnesses is quite different from most surveys. • Drop suicide Q’s – unreliable infor. And ethical issue to avoid.

22. Health • List of health symptoms: more approp. To developing countries? • What about lifestyle diseases?

23. Outlook on life • Identity questions: can’t ask people directly about identity • Rate several aspects of identity on a simple scale.

24. Satisfaction • Current: satis/dissat. With why follow-up, incl. discrimination Q. • Scale is not appropriate because satis. is a continuum and a dichotomy doesn’t pick up the average • 10-point scale works all over the world and doesn’t take more time. • Why question: ask of everybody or nobody • Important to use both happiness and depression type Q’s

25. Employment • Resembles ILO but normal way of doing it is to present all possible categories including all types of activity and non-activity (4 categories of work, unempl., training, housework) plus why not active. • Need measurement of unemployment (temporary? Large periods over last 5 years?)

26. Quality of working life • No information • Instrumental attitude toward work: does work have intrinsic • Job seeking questions are unnecessary.

27. Leisure • Missing data on assets – instead you are looking at use

28. Leisure: Greenland perspective • also important to include activities that involve nature, not just in the city

29. Regionally-specific items • Index – method will work. You start by saying what you are trying to measure.

30. Environment • D71: interest = change to importance • Make importance Q’s symmetrical for all dimensions • Satisfaction Q’s: housing, jobs, public safety, etc. = also ask importance • Vote Q

31. Environment • Security – there are standard questions for this • Political resources – similar to Nordic countries, has additional items for special situations • Housing – much too large • Material living conditions indicators not defined in a consistent way (own vs. use vs. purchase). Make it all assets • Income section but ECHP version is “smarter”, probably more efficient.

32. Environment • Need several measures of vulnerability to poverty: both objective and subjective measures.

33. Environment- Saami perspective • In some ways, we are very far away from the indigenous reality • Time critical periods – • Much work that is unseen – checking, planning • Distinguish between different political systems

34. Reflections on your ideas

35. Technical matters • Yes, one database • Common reporting, yes and regional and specialized as well • Yes, intense work required

36. Open-ended questions • Primarily used to generate closed-ended categories

37. Health • Suicide Q’s use open-ended Q? Self-administered section

38. Next Steps

39. Next steps • Bring together what we have learned from: • you, • From standardized instruments you have suggested • from the pretests, and • what we have not shared with each other • Use our time-constraint as the means of setting priorities – taking into account balance of different dimensions

40. Next steps • Adopt common interviewing styles, rules • Iterative pilot testing with shared results • Major, task-oriented workshop • Common code book, including planned indices

41. Open-ended questions • Pitz: this is an important issue not to be dismissed lightly • Peter: Important to see in terms of more than one study • Joachim – invitation of handwritten material proved to be successful (35-40% of sample)