01/23/2026
On February 4, 2025, the Alberta Government announced the creation of a new income support program—the “Alberta Disability Assistance Program” (ADAP) along with new employment supports. While some details are yet to be confirmed via regulation, ADAP will be for low-income Albertans with disabilities “who are able work.” ADAP will exist alongside the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) program—the longstanding income assistance program for persons with severe and permanent disabilities in Alberta. ADAP is scheduled to launch in July 2026.
The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of ADAP and resultant employment impacts on income assistance clients and persons with disabilities. This study will also examine whether and how different measures of poverty can be used to improve policy design and evaluation in Alberta and Canada.
Eligible participants must be:
Between 18 and 64 years old,
Living in Alberta, and
Either receiving income assistance (AISH, Income Support, or ADAP) or living with a disability.
What Will Participants Be Asked To Do
Participants will be asked to answer a survey every six months ending December 2028. The survey questions are on: basic demographics, disability type and severity, employment situation, and ability to meet their and their households needs. Personal questions will be asked including questions about gender, income, culture, education, family composition, employment, disability type and severity, whether participants have/can access certain items and services, and their housing situation.
Participation in this survey is voluntary. Participants may refuse to participate altogether, in any parts of the study, may decline to answer any and all questions, and may withdraw from the study at any time without penalty or loss of benefits.
What Type of Personal Information Will Be Collected
We will collect participants email and/or phone number, and date of birth. We do not ask for participant names or address.
Participants will also be asked to provide information about your basic demographics such as gender, age, culture, family composition, income, disability type and severity, your employment situation, and your ability to meet their needs.
What are the Risks and Benefits to Participation?
A foreseeable risk may be the identification of individuals. Participants may also be exposed to economic or legal risks in the case there is an information leak; it may potentially affect income assistance eligibility or amount. To mitigate this risk, the researchers have a data management plan, will protect the security of the data, and only allow access to the data to the research team (currently consisting of Dr. Tedds, Dr. Petit, and Lee Stevens). Responses and data will not be given to any person or organization not affiliated with this study. In publications, the researchers will ensure that participants are unidentifiable.
A potential inconvenience associated with this survey is the time it takes to fill it out. We anticipate it will take 20 to 40 minutes to fill out.
A potentially foreseeable harm to participants may be discomfort or emotional distress. Some questions may trigger financial anxiety or stress.
The benefit of participations is that participants will contribute to an evidence-based evaluation of income assistance and employment in Canada. Our objective is to use this research to inform evidence-based reforms to income assistance and employment programs and regulations in Alberta.
What Happens to the Information Provided?
No one except the research team will have access to the information collected in the initial survey and follow-up surveys. The information provided will be used only for this study. Data containing personal information will be stored for five years after the completion of data collection, at which time, such data will be permanently erased. The researchers will only retain de-identified data on secure servers which will not be shared with anyone outside of the research study.
Participant email or telephone numbers will be used to assign a unique and arbitrary identification number. Personal emails and telephone numbers will be kept separate and apart from the data used for the data analysis and will only be used to contact participants regarding follow-up surveys and interviews (if indicated), and to assign the unique identifying numbers. The data containing participant email and/or telephone number will be permanently erased five years after the completion of the study. The only data that will be retained is data with no identifying information.
Participants are free to withdraw until 3 months after data collection is complete. Data collection is expected to be complete in December 2028. Thus participants have until March 2029 to withdraw your data. If participants wish to withdraw, they may directly contact the researchers. No future surveys related to this study will be sent to participants in the case of withdrawal. If a participant makes it known, their information and responses will be permanently destroyed and not used in further data analysis nor published results.
Ethics Approval
The University of Calgary Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board has approved this research study (REB25-1727).
For Future Consideration
The research team is very mindful that participation in this study requires time and effort, particularly for individuals who may already face significant demands or barriers. At this time, we have not secured funding to offer remuneration to participants, although we continue to actively pursue funding that would allow us to provide honoraria in the future. We are proceeding with the study at this stage because the Alberta Disability Assistance Program (ADAP) is scheduled to launch in July 2026, and establishing a pre-launch baseline is essential for meaningful evaluation. In the interim, we ask that community organizations not raise the possibility of remuneration when sharing information about the study, so as not to create expectations we may be unable to meet. This information is shared for your awareness only.
Google form link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEYkjx54x9ug2wUFHYFCXvpByxIgGXWiz4BmbyDGwc9ZI2aw/viewform?usp=header
If you have questions, please contact:
Dr. Gillian Petit, Department of Economics, University of Calgary
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 780-224-2883
Thank you for your support of this important research.
