It has been a busy summer for the STAYin(g)Rural team, with the task of designing a 'drop-off and colelct' door-to-door survey, which is to be distributed to at least over 7,500 households across the three study areas in the upcoming months.

The survey, closely related to WP1, will help identify the 'stayer types' and 'staying processes' related to the three life course stages across the different case-study areas. It covers a wide variety of topics concerned with living in these rural areas; including reasons for moving to, and staying; education, employment and commuting opportunities and behaviours, use of the internet and community involvement. There is also a selection of questions which will provide an overview of the socio-demographic nature of the population lving in these areas. 

However, before this, one of the Principal Investigators on the team, Professor Aileen Stockdale, travelled to Burlington, Vermont, to present an introduction to our project at the 9th Quadrennial UK-US-Canadian Rural Geography conference, which was enthusiastically attended by a large number of scholars in the field of rural geography. Pictured is Aileen presenting an overview of the different stayer types identified in the preliminary stages of the project.