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Higher National Certificate in Housing Year 2 - Housing Information and Research HIR101: Housing Information Everyone working in housing collects and deals with information in their job. In this Block, we will look at what we mean when we talk about housing information and what sort of information different people need and use. It is important to note the difference between collecting information and carrying out research. The collection of information is not in itself research. Information can be defined as any kind of data, either facts or figures. Housing staff will collect information regularly, but they will not necessarily know how this information will be used. Collecting information is an essential part of a research process, but research involves the systematic collection of information and then interpreting that information through applying a particular theory. If you think about your own organisation, you will see that a whole range of information is collected regularly. This information is necessary to allow the organisation to carry out its day-to-day functions. Handling the tenants’ rent accounts is part of
the system. Each tenant will have an individual account of their rent,
and housing staff have to be able to answer any queries they may receive
from tenants about the state of their account. An important part of
the rent accounting system is being able to deal with rent arrears.
This As the above examples show, an information system is made up of a number of inter-relating modules. There are three important considerations to be borne in mind when we are looking at information systems in the context of how effective they are in helping housing staff to do their job. View HIR101:Housing Information as a pdf document HIR102: Housing-Related Survey For the housing provider, surveys have become increasingly popular in use. Broadly they can be broken down into two areas: Stock surveys; and people surveys. Stock surveys are concerned with the actual housing that people live in. They will often be carried out by the technical and housing conditions part of the organisation. These will often be surveys which will consider the condition of the stock and be used to determine future repairs and planned improvements programmes and costs. A good example of one of these types of surveys will be a stock condition survey. People surveys are concerned with interviews with tenants.
Most local authorities and housing associations carry out these surveys
regularly. A good example of one of these types of survey will be a
tenant satisfaction survey, which is designed to find out what tenants
think about their homes and the housing service that they In both of these cases, the basic reason for carrying out the survey is the same. Surveys are carried out when data is not available but is needed to help to solve a problem or to answer a question. They are used to gather “primary” data, which means that they are collecting new information. View HIR102: Housing-Related Survey as a pdf document HIR103: Statistical Techniques Statistics are concerned with summarising associations between variables (variables are simply things that vary, such as the type of houses a landlord has) and provides techniques for analysing data. A statistic is a statement about a set of data. Examples of these are – 750,000 households live in fuel poverty in Scotland. View HIR103: Statistical Techniques as a pdf document HIR104: Capabilities of Computer Technology Computers are a combination of ‘hardware‘ – the physical entity of the computer – and ‘software’ – the programmes which enable the computer to receive, process and store information. Computer technology is advancing rapidly in terms of both hardware and software. View HIR104: Capabilities of Computer Technology as a pdf document |
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