LOS ANGELES — When University of Southern California researchers set out to document the effects of the digital divide on homeless people, they made an unexpected finding: 94% of their survey participants owned a cellular phone.
Leveraging that knowledge, a crosstown team from USC and UCLA — drawn together by a common social mission — has been conducting a novel survey of the Los Angeles homeless population.
Offering $10 gift cards as incentives, the researchers are asking participants to sign onto a mobile phone app monthly to report where they stay, how they feel, what kind of help they're getting and how they're affected by policies such as the anti-camping ordinance newly in force in the city.
