Msw 6007: week 8 – signature assignment: prepare a mock research

 Instructions

For your final assignment, please select one of the following two scenarios to complete your Signature Assignment.  

Scenario 1: Survey Design

You are an administrator working in a residential hospice center that provides palliative and end-of-life care to adults with terminal diagnoses and a medical prognosis of less than 6 months to live. The hospice center also provides supportive services to the families of those terminally ill, such as end-of-life planning services and grief counseling.  The hospice center receives funding from multiple sources, including insurance payments, third party reimbursements, and private payments, and provides charity care for those who are uninsured/unable to pay for services. Much of the charity care is funded by received donations and grants awarded annually to the hospice center. Recently, the hospice center has been asked by one of the primary charity care funders to conduct research on the efficacy and client satisfaction of the support programs for families of the terminally ill residents. Your task is to develop a survey research design to gather information on the satisfaction of the families who are receiving support services. You will assess client satisfaction by completing this task.  

Complete the following for your written submission:

• Identify the primary research question you will address and any hypotheses you may be testing. Determine the kinds of variables you want to measure. What questions do you want to have answered? What is the best way to go about getting those answers?
• Identify the population you will survey and analyze any ethical concerns or considerations you may need to keep in mind with this population. Include a discussion of any ethical, cultural, or socioeconomic concerns that a researcher must be mindful of.
• Determine what mode of data collection you will use (e.g., personal interviews, telephone surveys, mailed questionnaires/drop-off surveys, web-based surveys, and email-based surveys) and provide a rationale for your choice. 
• Explain the type of data analyses you will complete to answer your questions, including any descriptive/inferential statistics you would utilize.
• Discuss any threats to reliability and validity and any other limitations of your study.
• Discuss how you will present your study findings to the charity care funders who have requested the study in an ethical and professional manner. Explain what you would do if the research findings painted the support services in a negative light.
• Be sure your study design demonstrates cultural competence, clear adherence to social work ethics, and sensitivity to marginalized and oppressed populations. 

Scenario 2: Program Evaluation Design 

Assume you are a program evaluator and that you are completing an evaluation at the 6-month interval for the following fictitious program. Read the program description, and then complete the tasks that follow:

Safe Haven is a shelter for adolescent runaways waiting for a court determination and trial. It was established as an alternative location to place adolescents instead of the general jail population. The goal of the shelter is to keep the residents safe while they wait for their court date. The ages of the residents range from 14 to 17. The Safe Haven staff monitors three safety risks for this population: harm to others, harm to self, and alcohol or drug use. Staff provides specific programming to address these three issues.

First, mandatory group counseling is provided daily from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday, so residents can learn conflict resolution skills to prevent them from harming others. During this group session, members listen to a 30-minute curriculum-based presentation followed by a demonstration. Group members then practice the skills with each other.

Second, all residents are monitored for depression and suicidal ideations to prevent self-harm. Residents meet Monday through Friday for 30 minutes with a social worker for mandatory individual counseling.

Finally, group members participate in a drug and alcohol education class. This is also a curriculum-based educational presentation on refusal skills followed by group practice and process discussions. This mandatory group meets daily from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. Urinalyses are conducted on residents every 3 days and a breath analysis every day before bed.

The rest of the days throughout the week, residents are tutored by a teacher who is brought into the shelter. On weekends, residents receive visitors and participate in recreational activities at the shelter under close supervision. 

Tasks:

• Design a program description for this program that includes the types of services being provided and their location; the program’s mission; the frequency with which services are offered, including time and day; and characteristics of the people you serve (number of residents, gender, race, age, income, etc.).
• Be sure to include a discussion of any ethical, cultural, or socioeconomic concerns that the program evaluation must consider when developing the evaluation plan.
• Develop a minimum of three program objectives. Objectives should be able to meet the SMART standard (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely or time-bound) and should demonstrate cultural competence, clear adherence to social work ethics, and sensitivity to marginalized and oppressed populations.
• Develop a plan to evaluate the MOST objectives.

Support your assignment with at least five scholarly resources. In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources, including seminal articles, may be included.

Length: 10-12 pages, not including title and reference pages