Kimmy Chuang sent the following email to the Environmental Justice Committee, requesting feedback on conducting focus group interviews. The draft questions and contact group documents are attached.

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Hello EJ Committee,

Meredith and I have compiled a draft list of interview questions for small focus groups and we’d like to hear your input. A large number of questions are adapted from the Providence RI Climate Justice Plan -- which you can read here -- as well as other local surveys I’ve researched. 

As mentioned during our last meeting, if you could please (1) approve each question (2) suggest any edits and (3) rank them in terms of priority. The full set of standard questions will be asked to the focus group. On the second page, you’ll find some other questions that we’ve been considering but aren’t sure whether to include as part of this list or only ask if time permits. If you think there is a question missing, please leave a comment. The draft questions can be found here on Box and are attached.

As we’re finalizing these questions, Meredith and I were also thinking of starting to reach out to the people we’d like to interview. We propose hosting five focus groups for each of the constituency groups: Neighborhood Associations, Community Organizations, Government, Social Justice Groups, and Relevant UIUC Advisory Groups/Personnel. We plan to ask for one representative from each entity to attend the focus group interview (see contact list attached).

We’re thinking of sending a Zoom invite for 12-2pm, but do you all think there would be a better time to convene the focus groups? For example, if usually people involved in Social Justice Groups or Neighborhood Associations work during the day, would it make more sense to host their focus group later from 4-6pm? With the interviewee’s consent, we will record these meetings. 

We would love your participation in the interview process as well. We propose two or three of us per focus group interview, though are open to your thoughts. Our suggested dates for the interviews, based on our schedules, are: 

Monday, July 26

Tuesday, July 27 (afternoon only)

Wednesday, July 28 

Thursday, July 29

Friday, July 30

Please send me and Meredith your feedback on our draft list or interview questions and your thoughts on how/when we should convene these focus groups. We request your feedback on the interview questions by next Wednesday, July 14. We would like to contact the groups and send out the Zoom invitations as soon as possible; please send us your availability/thoughts on participating in the interviews by Monday at the latest.