Usage of desk research in housing dissertation project work
1. Use in Chapter 1 for project background briefing, useful to inform the formulation of dissertation project scope in a rough sense.
2. Use in Chapter 2 for gathering ideas to inform the formulation of research objectives and research questions.
3. Use in Chapter 3 to explain and justify the desk research design
4. Use in Chapter 4 to present desk research findings, to be subject to analysis as informed by ideas examined in Chapter 2.
Findings and analysis for housing dissertation: some guidelines:
1. You need to analyse the findings of individual research method, one by one. It could be a qualitative or a quantitative data analysis.
2. Your analysis could involve inductive (e.g. for theory-building) and/or deductive reasoning (e.g. for explanation, ideas validation and hypothesis testing)
3. Your analysis on research methods findings needs to be informed by the ideas you have chosen from your literature review effort. That is, your analysis on research method findings needs to be theory-driven (based on the concepts and theories examined in your literature review chapter).
4. Your analysis on a research method findings should help you to meet the respective research objective, one which your chosen research method is formulated to respond to.
5. By achieving item 4 above (i.e. gaining knowledge related to a specific research objective), your research finding should help you to analyse findings of other research methods (which are intended to examine other related research objectives). For example, findings on the effects of external driving forces toward housing affordability [associated to research objective 1] should also help the research method finding analysis on the prevailing status of housing affordability of citizens of different profiles [related to research objective 2]. {and research objective 1 and research objective 2 are related}.
6. Some kind of chain of evidence should be provided in your findings analysis by referring to specific ideas and concepts mentioned in previous chapters of your dissertation report. {this is why clear labelling of those ideas and concepts in previous dissertation report chapters is good report writing practice.}
7. It is very useful to synthesize your findings from different research methods to come up with an overall analysis/ evaluation position of yours on your set of related research objectives.
Research method design considerations for housing dissertation work: some guidelines:
1. Your overall research methodology, comprising a set of research methods, should be anchored onto a specific research philosophy (more than one research philosophy with clear theoretical perspective switching indicated).
2. Your specific research method should be clearly responsive to one or more research objectives; you may have to indicate which part of your research method is related to which specific research objective.
3. Your specific research method should be clearly indicated to be informed by your writer's voice based on specific literature review findings.
4. Your research method design should be concrete in details, in terms of when, where, how and whom, etc..
5. Your research method design should be evaluated in terms of research method criteria, such as reliability, internal validity, external validity, feasibility and relevance, etc.
6. All your research methods should be depicted in a flow chart so that their sequence and task dependence are clearly indicated. Such task sequence (as shown in the flow chart) needs to be justified to be reasonable, feasible, triangulation-supported and logical.
Furthermore,
A research method could be primary in nature (i.e., involves primary data gathering) or secondary in nature (i.e. involves secondary data gathering). It should also cover data analysis methods to be employed to examine the data so gathered by the research method.
A research method can be quantitative or qualitative in nature.
What to write for the literature review chapter in the housing dissertation: some suggestions:
Primarily based on your literature review and desk research, discuss your findings that can explain and justify:
a. your research objective statements
b. your research questions
c. your research methodologies and specific research methods to be used.
d. your intention to employ specific academic ideas and theories to conduct analysis on your research findings.
Because of that, your literature review content should be largely grouped into sections that are clearly related to specific research objectives of your dissertation report.
Also, there should be your personal voice in the discussion, as informed by your literature review findings. And your personal voice is related to the research objectives that you have provided.
Innovation entrepreneurship and technology transfer assignment guidelines: Nov 2020
A. Write in academic style
B. Report structure
Essay title
1. Introduction
1.1. management concerns as related to the chosen theme
1.2 the assignment methodology used
1.2.1. literature review
1.2.2. desk research
2. Concepts review
2.1. on definitions
2.2. on the underlying theories of the theme
2.3. on practice and implementation guidelines
2.4. on conceptual gaps and debates relate to the theme
3. Discussion in terms of real-life examples
4. Concluding and recommendations
References
Based on my desk research on housing affordability in Hong Kong, I come up with the following research objectives, research questions and research tasks:
Example 1:
Research objective 1: to evaluate the differential impacts of the ongoing housing affordability to HK residents with different personal profiles, notably, home-owners vs non-home-owners, public housing residents and non-public-housing resident.
Research question 1: How does the current trend in Hong Kong housing affordability situation affect the experienced consequences by HK residents with different personal profiles?
Research task 1: to conduct semi-structured interviews with interviewees with different personal profiles on their perceptions about how the ongoing housing affordability situation in HK affect their economic well-being, social mobility and quality of residential life.
Example 2:
Research objective 2a: to identify the perceived major economic drivers, e.g. the economic impact of covid-19 and the economic impact of the changing financial centre status of HK, of the contemporary economic impacts on the HK housing affordability situation.
Research objective 2b: to find out how the perceived major economic drivers are inter-related with each other and other indirect drivers, together, affect the present HK housing affordability situation.
Research questions:
Research question 2a: What are the economic drivers perceived to be major forces that affect the present HK housing affordability situation?
Research question 2b: What are the perceived explanations on how the economic drivers, individually and together, affect the contemporary HK housing affordability situation?
Research tasks:
2a. to conduct a question survey via the social media platform to learn what HK residents consider to be the major economic drivers that affect the contemporary HK housing affordability situation.
2b. to conduct semi-structured interviews on HK residents with different personal profiles to learn how they understand the major economic drivers operate to influence the current HK housing affordability situation.
Lastly, it should be reminded that a hypothesis statement to be tested is also a kind of research question.
Desk research exercise
on housing
affordability in HK
Article
1
(url
address: https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3046868/hong-kong-tops-global-list-most-expensive-housing-market-again-protests)
Hong Kong has been ranked yet again as the world’s least
affordable housing market with social unrest failing to make any meaningful
dent on home prices for most of 2019. That dubious honour is for the 10th
straight year and is unlikely to be toppled in near future.
A family in the city would need
to save up for 20.8 years to afford a home in the city, according to the annual
Demographia International Housing Affordability Study, which ranks 92 major
markets across the world based on median affordability scores. That has barely
changed from 20.9 years in 2018.
Article 2
(url address: https://www.chinadailyhk.com/article/119131)
Hong Kong has been ranked as the
world’s least affordable housing market for 2019 – for the 10th consecutive
year – according to a survey released on Monday.
The special administrative region
has a median multiple – the median house price divided by the median
household income – of 20.8, a modest improvement from the previous year’s
20.9, a report by urban planning policy consultancy Demographia International Housing
Affordability said.
The median multiple is a house
price-to-income ratio that’s widely used for evaluating housing markets. It
means a family on average needs to save up for 20.8 years without spending
a single dollar to get enough money to buy a home in Hong Kong.
As of the third quarter of last
year, the SAR’s median apartment price stood at HK$7.04 million, while the
annual median household income was HK$338,000.
….. The sky-high home prices are linked to an
acute shortage of land, the report said, adding that new residential
development has been strongly controlled by the Hong Kong government since the
1970s.
The Task Force on Land Supply,
which was set up in September 2017, proposed designation or reclamation of
significant new areas for housing development in late 2018 in a bid to improve
housing supply and affordability.
Meanwhile, several private
housing developers have contributed portions of their land holdings to
alleviate the housing shortage. Wheelock Properties, controlled by locally
listed Wheelock and Company, said last month it will lease several plots of
land in Tai Po, Tuen Mun and Tung Chung to the government for a nominal fee of
HK$1 each for a period of eight years.
Hong Kong has a large public
housing program to ease housing woes. However, there’s still a shortage of
public housing. The Hong Kong Housing Authority says the average waiting time
for public housing for applicants was about 5.4 years in September last year.
Article 3
(url address: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-20/hong-kong-homes-remain-world-s-least-affordable-for-10th-year)
The city topped Vancouver and Sydney as
the most unaffordable housing market in 2019, according to a report Monday by urban planning policy consultancy Demographia. Hong Kong’s median property price declined slightly to 20.8
times median household income last year, compared to 20.9 times the year before….
Hong Kong’s sky-high property prices
have long been a source of contention in the city, where about one-in-five residents
live below the poverty line. Some have resorted to living illegally in steel
boxes or industrial estates because they can’t afford a home.
Article 4
Why is the Hong Kong Housing Market Unaffordable? Some
Stylized Facts and Estimations. March 2020.
(url address: https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/institute/wpapers/2020/0380.pdf)
As an international financial center, Hong Kong is
mentioned in global media from time to time. With a fixed boundary and a fixed
exchange rate with the United States, Hong Kong has been able to attract much
non-local investment in its real estate sector….
… the house price increases faster than the wage, as the
house price-to-wage ratio increases from 100 (1982 level) to about 270 (2018
level)…..
… a significant number of households live in need-based
public rental housing, and hence they are somehow "protected" from
the appreciation of the house price…
… Since the rent in public housing is significantly below
the market and adjusts slower than the market, it appears to be safe to
conclude that up to a third of the population is shielded from the housing
market fluctuations, and they tend to be the lower-income households. Since
public housing shelter in such a scale is absent in most countries, it may
suggest that merely comparing the Hong Kong house price-to-income ratio, or
similar metrics, with other countries, may not be as informative as previously
thought.
Article 5
The chronic shortage of
affordable housing in Hong Kong pushed it to become the first city in Asia to
develop public housing. The Hong Kong Housing Authority is now the biggest
social housing provider in the world with a rental stock of over 832,000
units that accommodated 29 per cent of the city’s population in 2018. Hong
Kong’s public housing caters for not just the poorest but also middle-income
households. While the poorest 40 per cent of households can apply for highly
subsidised rental housing, middle-income households are supported with
government developed flats that are sold at a discount of 60–70 per cent via a
shared ownership arrangement to increase home ownership.
But
the waiting list for pubic rental housing is long. Over 250,000 households and
family applicants must wait on average 5.4 years for
a rental flat. The home ownership scheme keeps no waiting list but a round of
sales in 2018 attracted nearly 60
applications per flat.
Yet
not all applicants to public rental housing are equal. Non-elderly single
applicants, who are subject to a point and quota system, are disadvantaged.
Points are assigned according to an individual’s age and years spent on the
waiting list. This makes it nearly impossible for young single applicants to
enter the public rental sector.
Land
reclamation has been the main instrument used to meet the increasing housing
demand, and expanding the subsidised social housing sector has been employed to
increase housing affordability for the poor. But both polices seem to have
reached their limits.
Reduced
housing supply and stringent policies on non-elderly single applicants of
public rental housing have worsened homelessness …
Article 6
Affordable housing is still achievable in Hong Kong
10/15/2019
- 09:50
We are seeing a bizarre phenomenon in society where the
“have-nots” worked extremely hard to try to catch up with property prices and
save for the down payment while the “haves” seem to live in parallel time and
space seeing their assets appreciate through property prices. A completely
broken housing ladder has denied the grassroots in society any sense of hope or
motivation that they can achieve financial and social status. Instead, it is
giving them a sense of powerlessness and resentment. The housing problem in
Hong Kong is, therefore, what we only see on the surface. What is under the
skin is a widening wealth gap between the haves and have-nots, which in turn
propels a loss of social mobility and a sense of social injustice among the
have-nots.
Desk
research exercise on homelessness in HK
Article
1:
Homeless
people increase amidst the COVID-19 outbreak: MSF provides temporary shelter
and free medical consultations
(url
address: https://msf-seasia.org/news/19070)
Six months into the COVID-19
crisis, Hong Kong is facing the third wave of COVID-19 infections; the most
severe yet with many of the cases locally transmitted, some from unknown
sources of infection. Where public facilities and services have been suspended
because of the virus, homeless people have been particularly affected. At the
same time, Hong Kong’s homeless numbers have increased due to the economic
downturn and increased unemployment rate. Médecins Sans Frontières
(MSF) has found that the number of homeless people in Tsim Sha Tsui district
has increased by 50 per cent within a month, especially after mandatory
suspension on dine-in services. Some are first-time street sleepers due to job
losses during the outbreak. MSF is concerned that they are particularly
vulnerable and often neglected during the pandemic and has been providing emergency
shelter and free medical consultations since June.
Article 2:
(url
address: https://www.chinadailyasia.com/article/149332)
HONG KONG - Hong Kong is seeing a
spike in its homeless population as the COVID-19 pandemic further marginalized
this disadvantaged stratum in one of the world’s least affordable cities.
According to latest Social
Welfare Department (SWD) figures, Hong Kong had 1,491 registered street
sleepers as of September this year, a significant increase from 1,297 before
the pandemic hit. Older, third-party studies have repeatedly suggested the
actual number could be higher.
Helping
hands
Jeff Rotmeyer, founder and CEO of
local NGO ImpactHK, saw “an overwhelming number of new faces” on the streets
since COVID-19 reared its head in the city. What is even more alarming is that
quite a number of people younger than the usual cohort became street sleepers,
he said.
Article
3:
(url
address: https://www.ucanews.com/news/oblate-missionary-walks-with-hong-kong-street-sleepers/89427#)
For almost 10 years, Ah Ming slept in a
public place in Hong Kong's airport. Last year, after authorities
restricted entry only to staff and travelers, he began sleeping inside one
of the 24-hour McDonald's restaurants.
But that luck did not last long for this
75-year-old man. He was forced to sleep on the streets after the Covid-19
pandemic hit the city and restrictions forced all 24-hour restaurants to close
at night.
The restriction meant all McRefugees —
homeless people sleeping inside 24-hour McDonald's restaurants — moved to the
streets. Hundreds now live on underused footbridges or roadsides and use public
toilets.
One such area in the city is Rest Garden in
the Yau Ma Tei area of Kowloon district, where scores of homeless people
live.
However, Ah Ming was fortunate to meet a
Catholic priest who helped him find shared rented accommodation. Father John
Wotherspoon of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate walks
through the Yau Ma Tei area each day looking to help homeless people.
….
After the government asked restaurants to
close at night as part of the Covid-19 restrictions early this year, the priest
launched a campaign to fund a resting place for the homeless.
The campaign collected HK$1.6 million
(US$155,000) in donations, mostly from Catholic parishioners. The money helped
more than 40 homeless people find cheap rented accommodation and to open a
shop selling used goods.
The priest said some street sleepers own
houses but rent them out and sleep in "free places" to generate
income. But they are not a priority for him.
Ah Ming said spending nights in the airport
was fine because "at least there is a shelter and a place to shower, and
the food is only HK$20 per lunch box — for those of us who live on government
subsidies, this is a good choice."
Article
4:
(url
address: https://www.cuhk.edu.hk/english/features/professor-wong-hung.html)
February 2015
Hong Kong faces a homelessness epidemic
produced by its surging property prices and huge wealth gap, according to CUHK
Professor Wong Hung. Such
street sleepers are largely invisible to ordinary citizens but are a rising
demographic.
Traditionally it has been drug abuse or
mental-health issues that forced people out of family units to live on the
street. But these "new homeless" are often gainfully employed and
have solid family backgrounds. It is economic necessity that makes them street
sleepers.
Professor Wong first detected changes in the
makeup of the territory's homeless population in a comprehensive census study
in 2000, and a similar study in 2004. In the first study, through head counts
and case studies, he determined that the average age of street sleepers, at 50,
had fallen rapidly from 54 in a government study conducted shortly before.
One-fifth of the homeless were under 40, double the old ratio. One-third were
able-bodied working poor or unemployed people who suffered as Hong Kong entered
recession. Three out of four cited economic hardship as the initial force
pushing them onto the streets.
The situation abated as the economy recovered
from recession that began virtually in lockstep with the outbreak of SARS. But
Professor Wong has seen it pick up again this decade and in 2014 in particular.
He now estimates there are 1,000 "new homeless" in the city and that
these economic outcasts make up 60 per cent of the homeless population.
