Dr. Melissa Beresford, Dr. Wendy Jepson, Dr. Greg Pierce, and Dr. Amanda Fencl all worked to put together a proposal for the California State University’s CALSPEAKS Public Opinion Survey (see full title and author details below). The CALSPEAKS survey regularly surveys a representative sample of California residents on key issues of public policy interest. The leadership of the survey solicits proposals from researchers each cycle to place a series of questions on a key issue of public policy importance.
The proposal, “Assessing Californians’ Experiences of Household Water Insecurity” was selected this month. They proposed a series of questions that will assess six key dimensions of water (in)security in California: water access, water affordability, perceptions of water quality and trustworthiness, perceptions of water governance, water concerns due to climate change, and experiences of water worry and distress. The survey questions will be deployed to a random representative sample of California residents in April 2021 as part of the CALSPEAKS survey. The data will provide a more fine-grained understanding of how water insecurity is experienced and thought about at the individual and household level across California and contribute to the larger HWISE project on household water insecurity in the Global North. The project will also provide key information for California policy makers who are working to monitor and advance California’s progress on the Human Right to Water.