A comparison of consumer and provider preferences for research on homeless veterans

Despite the dramatic growth of homelessness research, there have been no systematic assessments of consumer and provider preferences regarding the content of this research. Therefore, 87 clients and 28 staff of a homeless veterans program were administered a 15-item questionnaire requesting identification of the 5 "most" and 5 "least" important research topics. Staff and clients differed significantly on 6 items considered most important and 4 items considered least important. Clients wanted more research that focused on material needs, whereas staff preferences were more broadly distributed. The fact that appreciable data exist for many of the research topics that respondents identified as important raises concerns about the accessibility of homelessness research.