Note on the Baseline Project as a baseline study

BC’s Office of the Human Right Commissioner (BCOHRC) initiated the multi-year Baseline Project during the Human Rights Commissioner’s first five-year term. This project aims to capture the current state of human rights in the province, creating a baseline that can be used to monitor change over time.

Unlike many other baseline studies, however, this Baseline Project does not rely on quantitative indicators alone. Instead, BCOHRC has sought to develop a baseline study that incorporates decolonizing and participatory approaches. These approaches allow the Commissioner to hear and amplify the voices of those most affected by human rights challenges in B.C., identify emerging human rights priorities and strengthen the provincial network of human rights actors. 

The work of the Baseline Project has been valuable in many respects, but it is not without challenges and tensions. Creating a human rights baseline is particularly challenging because, while any baseline is necessarily partial and incomplete, human rights issues are complex and far-reaching. There are also tensions between the research goals inherent in creating a baseline and the goals of the more relational and participatory research approaches we have sought to incorporate.

Two major Baseline Project activities are community-based research and the provincial service organization survey.  While these activities provide valuable information, they only partially capture the state of human rights in B.C. and cannot be used to monitor change over time.

Challenges of community-based research in establishing a baseline

BCOHRC’s research team conducted exploratory community-based research in four small to mid-sized communities in different regions of B.C. in 2023 and 2024. This work has helped BCOHRC identify human rights priorities and illuminate some of the contextual and systemic factors that underlie them. However, we recognize that it is not possible to generalize from four communities to all communities in B.C. This research also does not constitute a complete baseline of human rights in each community as there are many populations and issues that we did not have the opportunity to learn about. Because this work is primarily qualitative, it is also difficult to compare communities or track change over time.

Challenges of survey research in establishing a baseline

In spring 2023, BCOHRC conducted a provincial survey of service organizations and others whose work is connected to human rights—including First Nations government, public servants, education staff and community service providers. The survey gathered input on the importance of different human rights issues, participants’ perceptions of trends in those issues over time and perceptions of the prevalence of discrimination against populations with which they work. This information is helpful for capturing provincial trends and for identifying emerging human rights issues. However, the respondents were highly heterogenous and survey results strongly depend on who participates. In other words, the composition of survey respondents—such as what sectors they are part of, what roles they place and what communities they come from—will likely change between survey rounds, making it difficult to compare results over time.ⁱ Because the composition of respondents has such a strong effect on the survey results, and because the survey is focused on subjective perception of issues,ⁱⁱ it is difficult to use this tool to monitor change over time.

Annual polling and the Rights in Focus report

There are two aspects of the Baseline Project that are closer to a traditional baseline study: annual polling and the provincial Rights in Focus report. Annual opinion polling is a powerful method of tracking attitudinal change over time. The provincial Rights in Focus report, which is intended to be repeated every three years, is structured around major systems that allow BCOHRC to monitor key indicators and major policy developments, while still providing flexibility to profile specific emerging issues as “spotlights.”

The quantitative indicators featured in the Rights in Focus report have been selected through statistical reviews of publicly available data, with aim of identifying indicators that are:

• reliable (i.e., consistent and reproducible)
• representative of the underlying population of interest
• disaggregated to capture inequities between groups
• measured periodically to track change over time

However, it is important to recognize that these project components alone do not constitute a comprehensive baseline of human rights. Overall, multiple research activities are needed to contribute to a baseline snapshot of human rights.

ⁱThere are some ways to adjust for this statistically. For example, we could compare results by sector, region or role to know how much the results vary based on who is responding. We could use survey weights to account for changes in the composition of respondents in different rounds. But there are also limitations to these approaches. We cannot control for many differences in the survey sample (for example we do not ask for demographic data). Moreover, it is not clear how to best interpret changes even with these adjustments and controls. For example, if a future round of the survey has more responses from people who work for or represent First Nations, and this group reports higher rates of discrimination against First Nations people in various settings than other respondents, statistical adjustments will not help us better understand the “true” prevalence of discrimination.

ⁱⁱFor example, if 60% of respondents say issue X is a top priority in 2023, and 70% say so in 2026, we cannot determine what has changed: the issue itself or its visibility.