I’m working on a social work discussion question and need guidance to help me learn.
I need this response to this discussion question answer below:
Response Question:
I found that this article’s qualitative program has both pros and cons to it. To start with, I would say that the strengths of this design is that there were interviews conducted. The good thing about conducting interviews is that you get to talk with several different participants whether that be the students, social workers, and/or school administrators. You are able to get everyone’s input of the study and personal views. Interviews allow for the question that is being studied to have clarification and open–ended responses. Having inperson contact allows for better response rates, if you attempt to get responses by mail or email it is not guaranteed that the participants will respond. Using qualitative research allows for flexibility and inductive reasoning. You are able to make observations from these interviews along with having follow-up interviews. You are able to go back to the person that you interviewed the first time to ask questions or get an input on the results and conclusions made. A lot of the time researchers are unable to conduct follow ups due to not being able to get in contact with the participants later on.
However, there are also cons to this methodology. When you use a qualitative method the sample is a lot smaller and is loosely structured. This article has a small sample due to the fact that it only used data from one school district out of thousands in the country. A reasonable representation cannot be made about dropouts by the collection from just one school district. Every school has its dropouts and is effected by a diverse array of reasonings such as the school itself, economic, community, family, and individual factors. This school was located in a primarily urban school district. What about schools that are located in rural areas, they may have different factors that contribute to their dropouts. Along with location, the article brought up this school district’s policies and procedures, however, each school district is different and can have different policies and procedures. When the article says that some students drop out due to not meeting the required amount of credits there are other school districts that have different requirements for credits. Other school districts do not have social workers available for students to talk with who are considering droping out and do not have a program in effect for dropout prevention. You are not able to come up with a reasonable conclusion about dropouts based on this one school districts data. My recommendations for strengthening the design would be to conduct interviews at multiple different schools around the county. Having some schools in rural areas and urban areas. Along with conducting research at large and small schools with and without dropout prevention social workers. You would want to conduct research at a variety of schools so the data is not skewed.
For my program that was discussed in week 3, I would add qualitative research by conducting interviews. Conducting interviews would assist evaluating my program tremendously since it is conductiong research for a smaller agency that is located in one area and not around the country. When you are working with a small sample it makes sense to use qualitative research due to the fact that it is easier to observe and use personal views. Using interviews makes the most sense, we are wanting to see how effective the program is for the clients and to find out their progress from start to finish.
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