To this end, a number of activities were carried out over a four-month period. A limited selected literature review was conducted, based on information collected by national organizations such as the Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women.

A questionnaire was developed and tested for the client group, and was administered on-site with both illiterate and newly-literate clients. The questionnaire was designed to explore clients' personal attitudes to illiteracy, their experience in trying to cope, and their evaluations of the effectiveness and relevance of existing programming.

On-site interviews were also conducted with local executive directors or their designates, to reflect the experiences of each Elizabeth Fry Society with regard to client illiteracy, staff perceptions of clients' attitudes, and the agency's involvement in client assessment, counselling, and program delivery.

2.0 Methodology: Action Research

Research is defined by the Women's Research centre in Vancouver as "the systematic collection and analysis of information on a particular topic." Within this definition, data collection can take place in a number of ways: through surveys, interviews questionnaires, controlled experiments using random samples and so on. In addition, data analysis can take a number of forms, and is commonly divided into two types -- quantitative, involving statistical information or numbers, and qualitative, involving detailed descriptions of particular circumstances or situations

Both qualitative and quantitative analysis can provide useful ways of looking at research material. For example, quantitative analysis can be helpful as a way of understanding or comparing social trends, such as the fact that more than 50% of women in penal institutions are illiterate. Qualitative analysis, on the other hand, can provide a coherent, detailed picture of the lived experiences of the women themselves.

In many research projects, quantitative research is favoured, since the numbers quantitative research produces are seen as "objective" and without bias, and therefore somehow more "truthful". Such a preference reflects a common perception about research: that it must be "uncoloured by feelings or opinions". This implies that the people doing the research must have no inherent viewpoint, and no biases which could affect the outcome of the research.

Qualitative research, on the other hand, is perceived as less rigorous, since it in based not on comparisons of numbers or so-called objective data, but on the lived experiences of the subjects involved. Clearly, such experiences are strongly coloured by subjective feelings and opinions on the part of the people being studied, and are presented to the researcher's audience through the subjective lens of the researcher.

The Women's Research Centre notes that "everyone -- even a researcher has a point of view, feelings and opinions that, are difficult, if not impossible to set aside....It follows that if a researcher pretends to be distanced and does not declare her assumptions and opinions, she is more likely to produce biased research."