New Geo-Spatial Inclusion Research Stream
To address the geographical and spatial aspects of older immigrants’ social isolation and social connectedness experiences, a fourth Research Stream was created. This new Research Stream is called the Geo-Spatial Inclusion Research Stream and is led by Zhixi Zhuang, who has done extensive research in this area.
This Research Stream will focus on the space and place context, housing, transportation, and accessibility, among other factors, and ensure that these key factors are considered in all aspects of the ICOI project.
Research Streams
Based on the results from the English and French qualitative and quantitative literature reviews, a list of key factors that have an impact on the social isolation of older immigrants within Geo-Spatial, Social, Economic, and Political Inclusion domains have been identified and then organized into three levels: the individual level (micro), the community level (meso), and the societal level (macro).
The final list of key factors and related measures have informed a Community Partner Survey and an Older Immigrant Survey.
ICOI Training Plan Update
Based on the results of the Education & Training Survey that was completed by the ICOI team members, Sandeep Agrawal (Education & Training Support Committee Lead) organized the ICOI Training Plan for year 3 which will include a series of training sessions.
These bi-weekly training sessions were open to all ICOI partners, community partner staff, current and incoming research staff, as well as undergraduate and graduate students working with the ICOI academic and community partners. The sessions were facilitated by
various ICOI team members, recorded over Zoom.
Session topics include mixed methods, consent, law, and equality rights, ethical practices in research, engaging older immigrants in data
collection, theoretical approaches, analyses of large datasets, collaboration models, critical ethnography, and ICOI Research Stream topics.
Data, Design & Evaluation
Committee Work
The Data, Design & Evaluation Committee formed sub-committees to conduct literature reviews on existing data collection methods,
recruitment strategies, and translation/interpretation practices to inform the Older Immigrant Survey protocol development and
research design.
ICOI Community Partner Survey
The overall goals of the ICOI project are to identify factors that contribute to social isolation among older immigrants, and subsequently, to design culturally and linguistically appropriate interventions to address social isolation and to improve social connectedness.
The Community Partner Survey aimed to elicit the ICOI community partners’ perceptions of the key factors that contribute to social isolation; specifically, they will be asked to rate these key factors so that we can identify those that should be given priority for intervention.
The Community Partner Survey was shared with over 40 community partner agencies.