Located in UCF's Department of Sociology, the Institute houses:

Survey Research Laboratory, with the capacity to do telephone and mail surveys and polls throughout the central Florida region.

Center for Qualitative Methodologies, which specializes in focus-group methods and in-depth interviewing.

Center for Outreach and Public Service, which embodies the Institute's commitment to social and human service agencies that serve the population of our community.

Institute faculty consult regularly with community agencies and groups on issues of program design and evaluation; survey research; data base design; data analysis; how to access and analyze Census data; and geographic information systems (GIS).

Study Highlights

49 percent of low-income people reported that they are working, 16 percent each are disabled or retired and 9 percent are students or housewives. Only 10 percent are laid off, unemployed or otherwise economically idle.

78 percent of low-income residents and 50 percent of middle-income residents reported spending more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing. In addition, 60 percent of low-income renters reported spending more than half of their incomes on housing. Federal guidelines say families should not spend more than 30 percent of their income on their rent or mortgage plus utilities.

56 percent of low-income respondents said they could not pay their bills if they missed one month’s of pay. Surprisingly, 38 percent of middle-income respondents and 24 percent of upper-income respondents made that same claim.

Workers pay an “economic penalty” for not being white. Among all of the surveyed low-income families, 29 percent are African-American and about 20 percent are Hispanic. Among middle- and upper-income families, about 15 percent are African-American and less than 10 percent are Hispanic.

A third of low-income families and a fifth of middle-income families reported having no health insurance coverage for themselves, spouses or children. 28 percent of low-income families reported that in the past year “they needed health care but delayed or did not get it because they could not afford it.”

25 percent of low-income, 14 percent of middle-income and 10 percent of upper-income families said they are so far in debt that they feel “they will never be able to get out.”

There is a “very sizable pocket” of low-income retirees in Central Florida, and most of them are less-educated, widowed women.

Women (57 percent), African-Americans (32 percent) and Hispanics (21 percent) are far more predominant in the low-income disabled group than in the middle- and upper-income disabled groups.

Click here for full report.