MSc in Rural Planning and Development thesis by MC Ourlaine Pashley ([email protected])
The Becoming of an Ontario Shared Rural Vision: A Tale on a New Narrative for OMAFRA and Rural Ontarians on Rural Accountability is a research project to determine if compiling rural On-tarians’ vision would reveal the key drivers for an attractive future in rural Ontario. The research aims to provide a correlation of the opinion of rural Ontarians about key rural elements for rural Ontario’s better future. The research gathered the input of rural residents through an inquiry phase where its results were returned to the participants for calibration through a feedback loop phase. Participants responded to evaluate the degree of accuracy of the preliminary findings and influence the conclusive report of the study.
The contact list of the survey was generated to fit the inclusion criteria of the study (i.e., age 18, speaks English, lives in a lower tier rural community of 51,000 people or less. Participants may be affiliated with any local rural, municipal, provincial groups such as agricultural societies. Participants in the project had the choice to opt out at any point in the survey. Their choice to anonymously contribute their responses will not be recognizable and will not be ex-tractable from the study once submitted.
Where a participant has opted to continue to participate in the study during the feedback loop phase, the URL (https://uoguelph.eu.qualtrics.com/ruralvision ) is provided for them to ac-cess from June 2021, the report of the research in the format of their choice. This is with the goal of nurturing their interest in the project and ensuring that Knowledge Transmission and Transfer (KTT) is integrated in the research process. This guarantees the accessibility of the research to those who created it in the first place. It would also spark discussions and debates in living rooms, classrooms, and around conference tables about rural visioning in Ontario. The resear-chers are offering a synthesis of the research in three different formats to facilitate exchange, dissemination and dialogue about the research topic for the purpose of connecting research with participants and users.
Stay tuned for outputs of this research!