The areas sampled then were: (a) Southern Vancouver Island - mainly service industry centres with emphasis on the hospitality industry; (b) Vancouver's downtown eastside - densely populated urban neighbourhood of low socio-economic level; (c) Northwest College - northern resource industry towns; and (d) Selkirk College - southern interior rural service industry and one-industry towns.

Finding the population

The crucial problem in nonparticipation ABE studies is how to identify a representative sample of nonparticipants. There was insufficient time to set up a study based on large-scale sampling. A suggested procedure was to visit literacy classes, talk to learners and ask them if they knew someone who had difficulties with reading and writing, who had never been to an ABE literacy program, and who would be willing to talk to the writer. This procedure did not produce many interviewees when it was tried in Victoria. Coordinators, instructors, rehab officers, and agency people were then contacted and asked to identify people. The coordinator at one college put an advertisement in two local weekly newspapers for two consecutive weeks (see Appendix B) for people to be interviewed. Two people came forward as a result of that. A Native Friendship Centre put a notice up in its building, and two people came forward through that channel. By and large, the sample was made up of people identified by some person other than the writer, but everyone had expressed a willingness to be interviewed for the project.

The sample population was to be drawn from adults 18 years and over with either less than a Grade 9 education or specific literacy problems. In fact, many income assistance people who were identified and who volunteered for the interview had higher levels of education. There were nonparticipants and withdrawals. In the end, there were more of the latter category. Some adults who had either just entered a literacy program or who were thinking about doing so were interviewed on the grounds that this sample would be most newly aware of the issues and problems faced in enrolling in a program. (Compare Hayes' 1988 study.)

The end result was that 66 people were interviewed on a face-to-face basis by the writer. The interviews on the average lasted about 45 minutes with the range being from half an hour to one and a half hours. A semi-structured open-ended interview format was used. Two interview schedules had been developed, one for each topic (see Appendix C), but in the trial runs the questions had seemed artificial and intrusive and there was some negative reaction from participants. The writer found that if the project was explained and she concentrated on establishing rapport, people opened up and in the course of their conversation many of the questions were answered without any further prompting. Everyone was assured of confidentiality and those for whom specific appointments had been made, received a small honorarium as indicated above. For students currently in class, no payment was offered. The interviews took place in a variety of settings -- people's homes, adult learning centres, college classrooms, motel restaurants, coffee-shops, a Native Friendship Centre, and a library.