SOPY 3045 Social Research research proposal

Name: Chan Chun Sum Brian(18672361)

Topic: young working poor in Hong Kong

Introduction

In nowadays, Hong Kong teenagers facing difficulties in job opportunities, in

which they get low skilled jobs in society. Although different teenagers graduate in

bachelor degree level above, it still severe in finding job as there are only less

employers employ teenagers, in which causes the working poor happened and low

social mobility in society. Whenever the young working poor is severe in

nowadays, it is believed that government policies to teenagers are significant as the

policies are effectiveness in providing job opportunities to teenagers. On the other

hand, the government subsidization is also significant in society as there are

different young working groups work harder, in which still can’t fulfill their

quality of life. Before start this discussion, this essay will discuss the focus,

research objectives, relevance to social policy, target group situations, research

method and the limitations of research, in which based on literature review.

Ultimately, the main reason of choosing this topic is because Hong Kong young

generations feel hopeless in their career due to different time of employment.

Definition of young working poor

To begin with, what is young working poor?I believe young working poor related

to the poverty in society as although different sociologists argued the poverty

definition, such as Spicker(2008)accounted for the social circumstances, which

included social class, dependency, exclusion, lack of basic security and lack of

entitlement. Poverty was related to moral judgement in society as he argued that

there were critics in defining poverty and moral position since poverty lead to the

morally unaccepted.

Alcock(2006)also argued that poverty was the key concern in society, which

became the social exclusion or even the income deprivation. He believed poverty

divided as absolute poverty and relative poverty. Absolute poverty was defined as

the need of sustain the life and became objective in society. It also became life-

threatening to citizens and was determined by poverty line or even budget

standards while relative poverty was defined as the base of individual poor and

group of poor people’s living standard comparison. In addition, he also mentioned

the relationship between poverty and social divisions, such as gender, racism, age

and disability. Those divisions could be reflected as the definition of poverty as for

gender, it was related to employment and low-pay as poverty problem defined as

social exclusion in which there were income inequality. Nevertheless, Alcock also

defined poverty as the individual and household perspectives, in which became the

multi-dimensional approaches as he argued that the absolute and relative low

income of household were the significant as global states researched poverty to

find the measures to tackle poverty.

Except mentioning the definition of poverty from different sociologists, I believe

young working poor is the phenomenon of poverty in Hong Kong as young

working poor is related to youth poverty. Moreover, it is true that teenagers who

born in below poverty line which causes their education level is low, or even get

the low-skilled job in workplace, such as cleaning workers which they suffer the

minimum wage welfare policy in nowadays. Although they work harder in society,

it still causes the low-income to teenagers in nowadays since it is believed that

employment is the musical chair game in which they need to face employed and

unemployed in different times.

A research article review

A Study on Young Working Poor in Hong Kong(2014) Over half of the teenagers

in Hong Kong facing working poverty and labelled young working poor

(HKFYG,2014).

Objectives of research

First, the study observed the situations and comparisons of young working poor in

different countries in 2014, such as US, Japan and Taiwan, or even focus in Hong

Kong. Second, it wanted to find that reasons of young working poor in Hong
Kong, the views of young working poor from teenagers and to give suggestions to

Hong Kong government to tackle the young working poor in society.

Research Method

It was housed in the Hong Kong federation of youth group(HKFYG), and it

commissioned the Hong Kong policy 21 to conduct a telephone survey from 23rd

September to 18th October 2014 and case interview(semi-structured interview)

from 25th September to 1st November 2014. It used both mobile phone and fixed

line telephone. After both survey and interview, the results were discussed with the

experts onwards in November 2014.

The participants

They were aged 15 to 34 years old, 522 people had completed the telephone survey

in Chinese or English, 20 people were invited after the telephone survey to

complete the case interview.

The main finding of a research article

From this research, I found that there were more young people suffer the poor

working conditions as their job were unstabilized and gave the reasons on working

poor in Hong Kong. In this survey and interview, there were 51.3% respondents
were sub-degree and degree or above. 39.5% of respondents belonged to income

between $10,000 to $14,999. It showed that young people income were low.

Besides which the percentage of respondents agree to improve their and to stabilize

their job and to protect the working teenagers quality of life was 33.5%, while

32.4% of respondents wanted the continue education. It showed that they also

think to provide long-term stable job for solving the young working poor. 41.9% of

respondents believe the responsibility of solving young working poor is

individuals. And the percentage of people who believe government should

responsible to solve young working poor was 37%. Although the rate has been

shown, the percentage was still low, and it showed that there were still many

young working poor in Hong Kong.

The comments on research

1. Contributions of the research

The contributions of the research are the discussion of young working poor in US,

Japan and Taiwan. For example, the rate of young working poor in Japan is higher

than 70% in different age group. In fact, there is a more favorable view towards

young working poor in Hong Kong, in which there was a significant suggestions to

government policy. People’s opinions and a basic understanding of young working

poor became considerably clearer and accepted. Consequently, it can be said that it
is a sign for Hong Kong people starts to have a more open mind about tackling

young working poor in the city.

Additionally, we can see the contributions of the research can be taking in

consideration to a possible step of the tackling young working poor in Hong Kong

in the future, as 41.9 % of Hong Kong People agreed with the responsibility of

government to tackle young working poor; therefore, the time towards exclusion of

young working poor in 2014 becomes somehow more hopeful for the community.

In general speaking, it is noticed that teenagers need more than 5 years to exclude

from young working poor in Hong Kong society. Moreover, from the result

discussion with different experts, it is believed that the reasons of young working

poor are significant as vicious cycle of employment. In fact, it is suggested that

government should “subsidise the tuition fees of low-income working young

people for recognised part-time courses”, or even “support the diversified

development of different industries in order to provide more career choices for

young people”. (HKFYG,2014)

2. The limitations of the research

The three major parts of this research paper will be made this research less

representative, and there are related to the telephone interview, collected groups,

and different research methods. In the telephone survey and case interview, it has
less representative of sample size which is less than 1% of Hong Kong population.

Also, because of the time limits of a telephone interview, the questions of the

telephone interview are not extensive. For example, specific solutions only put in

the questionnaire, and the questions about views of young working poor are direct

and straightforward. Therefore, it will have a high chance to cause some

misunderstandings. Besides, the collected individuals produced inaccurate results.

The collective data are from different individuals during the process of telephone

survey and case interview respectively. It means that it is inevitable to have

different opinions in these two research process. Lastly, there are bit different

research methods in 2014 research report. Since the survey sample is diverse and it

was added a new question in other survey sample. So, the sample bias will appear.

3. Suggestions for the research

Based on the limitations that have mentioned, there are few suggestions for

improving the research. First, it is available to enlarge the sample size by making

use of both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Or, researchers can seek

help from social organizations, to get personal information and make phone calls

with informed consent. On the other hand, qualitative research methods, it may

help to develop our understanding of how people think, intend, and interpret young

working poor in their real lives.

Moreover, there are less briefly information about the division of the age group,

education level of the correspondents; it can’t identify which group of people has

the main difference with other groups. Therefore, it suggested adding a question to

ask the distribution of age group, educational level and working situation of the

correspondents. And the questionnaire should add one more item to request the

detail, which can facilitate a meaningful comparison with other variations and

attitudes that have provided.

Research objectives and relevance to social policy

According to Li(2017)mentioned, the number of young working poor were

170,000. To decrease the number of young working poor, The HKSAR

government promoted CSSA scheme for benefiting teenagers. However, this

policy was ineffective as the problem will affect the decades.(Ngo,2014)

Target group and background information

The target group of this topic is the university students who are 22 to 25 years old

and have the bachelor degree, or even the sub-degree students as there are different

students graduate in degree above, in which they are difficult to find job as they

face the failure of employment in society.

The research design and method

I want to look forward to know the university students of:

Why there are lot of university graduates can’t find the job?

Are there any positive and negative impacts on young working poor?From mental

health or quality of life perspectives?

What situation is that young working poor facing off?

What government/society/family/we can do for tackling the young working poor?

(Allocate the resources in welfare policy? Provide more job opportunity to

teenagers?)

To what extent does the government welfare policy, such as CSSA scheme can

effective to university graduates for finding stable job?

First of all, random sampling will be used to collect the information when the

survey is implemented. It based on nonprobability sampling to study the topic in a

small population. Availability sampling is also used, and people are selected by

taking a principle of convenience.

The target group is university students. It is easy to find the target in campus, the

main reason is I still study at university, and interview can be the success if take

snowball sampling as one of the research strategy. It can find some hidden cases
that exist on campus, as well as reduce the time cost for searching suitable

participants to conduct face to face interviews. Interviewees are also detected by

friends’ friend. In fact, this sampling method of elements is selected as successive

informants or interviewees identify them.

I believe it will be meaningful if taking university students as interviewees since

the results can reflect how new-generation believe in young working poor for the

spouses. Covering the opinions of teenagers in Hong Kong society, it is possible to

find one male and female who are lower income, and live in poor environment to

be interviewees. The research method is conducting in-depth interviews, as well as

an online survey.

Literature review for the domain of survey design

From the literature review, there are some suggestions to solve the young working

poor in Hong Kong. On the other hand, the research focuses on whether

respondents view on suggesting government policy to tackle young working poor.

In fact, it also focuses on the effects in young working poor. For example, they

believe the difficulty of finding job will decrease their social mobility, or even

can’t fulfill the potential employment. Based on literature review, I will ask the

age, education level and working situations firstly, then I will further ask the view

of young working poor, reasons of young working poor and suggestions to tackle
young working poor.

The contribution of the research design

The survey design will include a face-to-face interview. It means that the data or

information is highly reliable. More importantly, it may raise the awareness of the

society to care for the problems of these young groups. Next, the online survey was

a quickest to find the view of public on the young working poor. To see the the

problem in young working poor, it may raise the awareness of the society to care

the young working groups. In fact, in designing the interview questions, I believe

there are some ethical consideration as young generation will avoid some

subjective questions, in which affects their mental health.

Limitation of the research design

It is evident that the opinions gain from the face-to-face interview is not

representative, because interviewees are only four. It is doubtful if four people in

the society are involved in the meetings. Having a lower representation of findings

is possible. Thus, it needs to draw more people to join in; whatever they are (not)

working poor. Because I want to know how different social groups think about this

issue, and how these opinions will affect the attitudes of our society. For online

research, it is hard to collect data by following random sampling strategy, so it is

suggested to conduct a survey on the street and gather relevant information through

randomly select people to finish a study after we have obtained their consents.

Conclusion

In conclusion, in the literature review, the situations of young working poor in

different countries become negative. In this second-hand information, it seems that

tackling the problem of young working poor in Hong Kong by considering the job

opportunities and continuing education. In the research design, I would ask both

questions about the job opportunities and their health problems based on the issue

of young working poor. However, there are no results in the interview and online

survey. Then, I cannot conclude my stance based on the study of first-hand

information.

References

1. Spicker, P. (2015). Definitions of poverty: twelve clusters of meaning.

Research gate net. Retrieved Jan 14,2015, from

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul_Spicker/publication/265422363_

Definitions_of_poverty_twelve_clusters_of_meaning/links/

54b63ff10cf26833efd3686f/Definitions-of-poverty-twelve-clusters-of-

meaning.pdf

2. Alcock, P. (2006).Understanding poverty.Britain: palgrave macmillan

3. HKFYG.(2014).A study on young working poor in Hong Kong.Retrieved

Nov 18,2014 from

https://yrc.hkfyg.org.hk/wp-content/uploads/sites/56/2017/09/YS52-Full-

Report_chi_20141118-min.pdf

4. Li, J. (2017). Working poor have to jump through hoops to get allowance,

Hong Kong survey finds. SCMP. Retrieved June 2, 2017 from

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/20967

17/working-poor-have-jump-through-hoops-get

5. Ngo, J. (2014). 'Working poor' problem will plague Hong Kong for decades,

professor warns. SCMP. Retrieved Nov 19,2014 from

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1643253/working-poor-

problem-will-plague-hong-kong-decades-professor-warns