This week's readings

Week 2 readings from our textbook ,Colin Robson's Real World Research: Second Edition, are about how to develop a research proposal, what theory of evaluation to use and ethics. This is timely considering my topic is on Foster Care youth and libraries. When I was working with the foster care agency, they were always using at least three different types of evaluations to determine how the child was doing, and this was of course kept completely private with only the child/parent/social worker/administrative staff knowing about it (unless of course it is audited by a professional audit group such as those working for Department of Social Services). When working with under-age children, as the text points out, "the parents or guardians should be asked for their [the child's] consent. In many cases, the child will be able to appreciate at least something of what is involved and should be asked directly in addition to the parent (Robson, 70)." So when formatting the research proposal, it would be important to make the evaluation source, for example a survey, open to both the youth and their parent/legal guardian.

I was actually curious of how to administer the survey down the road if the research ever made it past the proposal stage. I was thinking of asking some friends of mine who are social workers from my previous job about it, as I'm sure you would have to get some sort of authorization from DSS and/or from the foster care agency you decided to use. I was thinking it might be a good idea to partner with a foster care agency like DSS or SAFY (my former workplace) so they could share the resources available with their foster parents and children. The librarians involved could provide booklists about children in foster care.