Cuba Research Group prepares to depart

Members of our Global Community Institute research team are preparing to leave for their expedition to Cuba!

This endeavor, which marks our ninth annual international expedition, has a focus upon gathering data in two separate studies.  One addresses the experiences Cuban teenagers have in high school, using a written survey called the High School Survey of Student Engagement.  This tool, developed at the University of Indiana at Bloomington, will allow us to gather data about how Cuban youth gain from certain aspects of their education, and to compare findings between Cuban and American respondents.   The second study will employ ethnographic research and address how Cubans have adapted to the sustainability measures implemented during the Special Period, the difficult time following the withdrawal of Soviet subsidies for fuel and other resources in the 1990's.

The two studies have quite different foci, but each is designed to augment public understanding of this close neighbor to the USA about which little information is circulated in the popular media.

The research team will spend approximately 25 days in Cuba, traveling to Havana, Pinar del Rio province, Cienfuegos, and several other select locations to gain a cross-section of responses for our two studies.  In addition to written survey responses, our data collection activities will include video and audio interviews, photographs, quantitative visual data, and personal observations.  Upon our return, we plan to generate written and illustrated articles for several publications along with a video of our edited interviews.

If you wish to know more about this exciting expedition, please contact our office, or check in with our blog, which we hope to be posting to during our travels.