SOC111 MW 1p-2:50p

Jesse McClurkin

04/08/2018

SOC111

Homelessness Quiz

The articles which I have chosen to analyze are "A Decade of Change: Measuring the Extent, Depth and Severity of Food Insecurity." by Balistreri, as well as "Revisiting the Contact Hypothesis: The Case of Public Exposure to Homelessness" by Lee, Farrell, and Link.  For Balistreri's research, the author wished to track how much food insecurity had changed over a fixed amount of time, and also seeks to explain why, even after the recession of 2008, the food insecurity did not decrease even though people should have had more money to spend on food, in theory.  The aforementioned ranges in time to be studied were the years 2001-2003, 06'-08',, and finally 11'-13'. I'd imagine these years were chosen because that is the frame which the statistical data was taken in order to know the economic standing of Black, White, and Hispanic families and what affect the recession had on them.  By tracking how much money each group had and subsequently loss it could help to pinpoint whether their financial hardship was the sole cause of these groups not having sufficient food in their homes. They found that, black homes, with or without them having kids, were doing considerably worse than their white counterparts even though the drop-off of food insecurity was steeper for whites during the recession.  Just goes to show the disadvantage that blacks were working with from the beginning. The article by Lee et al. was focused on seeing how people's interaction with homeless people would affect their opinions. The methods they used was gathering participants through phone surveys, they then used answers from the survey to determine who they would further expose to homelessness and gauge their reactions. The results yielded were that people who had more exposure showed more understanding to their homeless counterparts.  Basically more exposure meant participants were more likely to put themselves in the shoes of the homeless before making judgements. Even though types of exposure did push results in different directions at times, the overall result showed that homeless exposure made people more empathetic. If one were to combine the results of these two studies they may find that one group of society has more of a softer side toward the homeless than the other, namely the people who find themselves more toward the level of the homeless.

Works Cited

Balistreri, K. (2016). A Decade of Change: Measuring the Extent, Depth and Severity of Food Insecurity. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 37(3), 373-382.

Lee, B., Farrell, C., & Link, B. (2004). Revisiting the Contact Hypothesis: The Case of Public Exposure to Homelessness. American Sociological Review, 69(1), 40-63.