Social Indicators in Surveys of Urban Aboriginal Residents in Saskatoon

The Bridges and Foundations Project on Urban Aboriginal Housing, a Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) project financed primarily by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), has been operational in Saskatoon since early 2001. During these past 5 years over 50 specific research projects, community surveys, graduate theses, workshops, conferences, seminars and other meetings have been conducted under the auspices of the Bridges and Foundations Project as a whole. This paper first discusses the various social indicators employed in seven surveys, which probed deeply into the views of local Aboriginal residents of their quality of life, particularly their living conditions and affordable housing. The paper focuses less on the vast amount of data gathered from some 2,000 residents than on the relevance of social indicators used in these surveys—for example which were most or least informative, and which were of most or least interest and pertinence to the residents themselves. In the process it would seem pertinent to discern which of various research approaches seemed, in retrospect, to have been most appropriate, informative and beneficial. The paper then proceeds to place our experience in the Bridges and Foundations Project within a broader theoretical discussion of social indicator development; and concludes with a brief commentary on the linkages between theory and research and between academic and community-based research.