Final Research Project Draft, Research Report Evaluation and Reflection Papers

Well it's the end of the semester literally and I have to submit my research proposal, research report evaluation and reflections by Monday. This has been a long semester and I've not been keeping up like I would've liked to, especially since November as that's when things got really hectic for me with school. I will say that despite this, I think my Research Proposal turned out really well, despite how everything was really confused in my head, once I got all the data down it started to make sense. I did end up getting a couple more articles to use on the final paper, such as Amie C. Kolos's "The Role of Play Therapists in Children's Transitions: From Residential Care to Foster Care," which explains about multiple placements and the effect it has on foster children, a resource I've been trying to find since the beginning. The National Endowment for the Arts study To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence, Research Report #47, gave statistics on how reading has been has gone down in the past 20 years, especially for 13-24 yr olds. This is a particularly sad assessment not only for librarians but also for the general population as well. 

I'm choosing the UK's National Literacy Trust's Executive Summary of their 2009 national summary to review for my Research Report Evaluation. I think I might try to tackle the Reflection paper as well tonight. 

FFT Week 9 & 10

FFT Week 9 was about using observation as a way to do collect data for a research proposal. Most of the chapter wasn't too helpful, as observation is primarily used for more in-depth ethnographic studies (which my proposal is not). However, these two points did stand out to me and make me question using observation. "Interview and questionnaire responses [which I had been planning to use] are notorious for discrepancies between what people say they have done, or will do, and what they actually did, or will do (Robson, pg 310)." So it makes me think that if I can afford it, I should take notes and video them. Privacy issues of foster children screams that this is a big no-no, so maybe I could audio record them and make sure all comments are billed as anonymous (assuming I was given permission to do so). Another issue with questionnaires that Robson brings up, via Agnew and Pyke (1982), is that "we only have to move the pencil a few inches to shift our scores from being a bigot to being humanitarian. We don't have to move our heavy-weight behavior at all (pg 310)." Here he is basically saying that people don't want to be taken in a certain light, so they may lie on questionnaires to make themselves look better, which is a problem when you are trying to look for accurate results.

FFT Week 10 was about additional data collection methods like historical methods, meta-analysis, triangulation (using multiple methods), simulation, content analysis, and feminist research methods. I thought the Box on page 372 was particularly helpful in describing how you can combine qualitative and quantitative methods into your research design. The biggest help about Chapter 12 was the gray sections in the back of the chapter, which talk about "Arranging the Practicalities," i.e. making sure you have certain things such as negotiating access to your subject matter/topic, making up consent forms (especially important with this population of foster children as I'm sure I would have to get multiple permissions before I could even see anybody), making sure you are organized, doing pilot studies, work on relationship with your superiors and follow up on your work.

More articles and settling on age range

I finally went to the library and asked for help to find more articles as I have had no luck finding additional ones. Thanks to the helpful librarians at RCPL, I managed to find another article I could use as an excellent example of library programs to directly target foster kids, namely Jessica Snow's Fall 2009 article for Young Adult Library Services entitled "Library Outreach to foster teens," which also gave ways for others to start similar library programs (very helpful). Another article gave me what I was looking for psychologically as background for the proposal, but I think I will end up using it for article reference instead. I still need to find an article that specifically says that the constant displacement and family situation of foster children disrupts their lives and makes it difficult to acclimate to situations. I did finally get to read the extremely long study from the UK's National Literacy Trust which explains about points like kids read more if the mother reads or encourages them to read, but I would like to find the results in the US. I found this resource on the website First Book, and I will continue looking online for reputable results.

After most of my research focused on teens, I have decided to make the age range of my study be 12-18 yrs, although for the general information of the research proposal, it will likely be all ages.

Literature Review articles

Ok I have been bogged down by schoolwork and stress, so this is a little late in coming, but I've finally read the articles I gathered at the beginning of the semester for the research proposal. And it seems that I've got more work to do. I started out with eight articles, but only three are usable towards this project. The most helpful is Vikki C. Terrile's December 2009 VOYA article entitled "Where They Live Now: What Public Libraries Can Do for Teens in Foster Care." It is also the only article that directly deals with my topic. The other two deal with foster kids and reading ("From Classroom to Courtroom: Our Role in the Community" by Kathy McClellan for Public Libraries), and books to recommend for foster kids that deal with foster care ("Home for A While: Understanding Teens in Foster Care Through Young Adult Fiction" by Andrea Rex for Feb 2008 VOYA).  

Reading through these articles has made me realize that maybe I should switch my focus from foster kids ages 5-18 to teens aged 12-18 as there seems to be more focus on this group. I'll see what other articles I can find to further decide this. 

Brainstorming Pt 2

Updated this a tiny bit and wanted to add to blog, as I was thinking about some things this week.

FFT Week 7 & 8

Our lecture for week 7 was about collecting data by creating surveys and questionnaires, while week 8 was on interviews, tests and scales, and budgetary concerns for your research proposal. I had originally wanted to mail out or do internet surveys, but now I'm not so sure. I must say that I'm a little confused as to which questionnaire approach I should use as I read Robson's comments on questionnaire issues on page 238. He says "A skilled interviewer should be able to achieve good rapport with nearly all interviewees in the face-to-face situation. The self-completion questionnaire has to rely on the quality of its presentation; conversely, the lack of direct contact means that these are better at dealing with sensitive topics." I'm not sure if everyone would consider some of the topics I would like to discuss in my research proposal as sensitive, but I would, given the nature of situation a lot of these kids are in. The constant moving and infrequency of seeing birth parents must be incredibly stressful and hard to deal with at times, and I'm sure a lot of kids act out. Not only that, but the foster parents could potentially be embarrassed by their lack of education and/or their not reading to the children, as these were questions I was planning to ask on the survey.

In Chapter 8, Robson discusses how long it takes to do a small-scale questionanire survey, and I must say that I was surprised that it took three to four months to complete, and that a mailed survey takes even longer because of the multiple different mailings that you have to do. In Box 8.2 on page 233, Robson discusses the advantages and disadvantages to doing surveys and one of the things that comes up under disadvantages is "data may be affected by characteristics of the interviewer and they may unwittingly influence the responses through verbal or non-verbal cues indicating the 'correct' answers." This means that I could influence how they answer their questions without really realizing it, something that I do not want to do. On the other hand, I like the advantage of the interview survey as it "allows the interviewer to clarify questions and encourages participation and involvement, and see whether the survey is being taken seriously." A few pages later is Box 8.3 where Robson makes a comparison of the different types of survey data collection, and face-to-face interviews are the highest cost, but have medium/long lengths of time needed to collect data, and allows for more complex questions to be asked. I also found Box 8.4 Checklist to Help Avoid Problems in Question Wording to be very helpful for the future when I actually sit down and develop my surveys. 

I didn't find Chapter 9-10 very helpful as I have pretty much decided to interview surveys, but I did enjoy the part about Likert scales and thought I might conceivably put that in the survey as well. I also liked Dr. Solomon's part in the lecture on putting budgeting info in your research proposal if you ever want to get it grant-funded in the future, which I hope it will be as I think that it is a really valid subject to research on. 

Chapter 6 of Robson

I'm a wee bit behind on posting but I'm here now. Robson's Chapter 6 was all about Flexible Designs, which was less boring to read about than Fixed Designs and actually applicable since it is what I plan to use for my research proposal. Before I had stated that I wanted to do grounded theory, but now that I am looking at the Box on page 6.1 I am considering doing a case study as it allows you to use multiple sources for information and there is a type of study called a Community Study, which is the "study of one or more local communities. Describes and analyses the pattern of, and relations between, main aspects of community life (politics; work; leisure; family life; etc) (Robson, 181)." I figure that fits foster kids and reading/library use pretty well.