Developing a Standardized Measure of Housing Instability through Community Engaged Research: A QuanCrit Paradigm

• In Event: Before Evictions: Rental Housing Instability and the Role of Local Regulations

Abstract

Introduction: Housing instability is a critical social issue that is linked to evictions, homelessness, adverse health outcomes, and persistent social problems; however, there currently does not exist a consistent and operationalizable definition of housing instability. Instead, existing measures tend to focus on narrow crisis factors (e.g., homelessness data, evictions) or subgroup-specific tools that are tailored to a specific group of individuals (e.g., veterans, individuals who have been victims of intimate partner violence). This represents an important gap in the research, practice, and policy fields since housing instability is inconsistently defined and measured within a wide array of contexts.

Purpose: This project addresses two related gaps in the housing literature: the lack of conceptual clarity around housing instability and the absence of a standardized measure that can be used across settings. It asks how housing instability is understood and experienced by individuals, including the conditions that signal instability and the role of institutional systems in shaping those experiences. It also asks whether a preliminary measure informed by lived experience can capture housing instability.

Data: Qualitative data will be collected in two phases via focus groups and cognitive interviews, while quantitative data will be collected via an electronic pilot survey administered to US adults with recruitment designed to include participants across diverse racial, gender, family, and housing backgrounds.

Design and Methods: Guided by a QuanCrit paradigm, the proposed research will adopt a scale development design to develop and pilot the Housing Instability Tool (HIT) tool. Focus groups will be strategized to determine how participants conceptualize and describe housing instability and generate domain-based language for survey items development. The next phase of the study will entail conducting cognitive interviews with participants whose input will help improve the clarity, comprehension, and responses to the draft items developed at this stage. Lastly, the pilot survey will involve evaluating items' performance, dimensionality, and internal consistency based on item review, exploratory/confirmatory factor analysis, reliability measurement, and, if possible, exploratory item response theory (IRT) and differential item functioning (DIF) analyses.

Findings: Preliminary outcomes will include the identification of key domains of housing instability and initial evidence on the performance of the pilot measure. The study draws on Cox et al. (2019), which defines housing insecurity as limited or uncertain access to stable, safe, adequate, and affordable housing and neighborhoods, and uses this multidimensional framework as a conceptual foundation. The qualitative phase assesses the extent to which the emergent domains align with these dimensions or point to additional ways of understanding housing instability. Pilot testing will provide initial evidence about whether the measure demonstrates a meaningful structure and performs consistently across items and participant subgroups.

Implications: This work seeks to move the field beyond fragmented indicators toward a more coherent understanding of housing instability. Grounding measurement in both participant experience and multidimensional theory may help produce a tool that better captures more consistent identification of housing precarity, stronger comparability across research and service systems, and earlier intervention before instability escalates into eviction or homelessness.

Author

• Vandeka Janese Eze, University of Delaware
  Presenting Author