Chapter 5 of Robson

Colin Robson's textbook Real World Research Chapter 5 was our course of study this week and focused on fixed design and its features, how to establish trustworthiness, how randomized controlled trial studies are the gold standard of research designs, and the different types of experimental and non-experimental designs. Honestly most of the information in the chapter was way over my head, being way too scientific for my taste, but some of the comments in the chapter really made me think. As I've said in my Blackboard post for Week 4, there were two quotes that stood out the most to me in the chapter. One was this sentence from page 100, which was a great way of describing how researches should establish trustworthiness and really I think for any design, fixed or flexible : "You persuade others by clear, well-written and presented, logically argued accounts which address the questions that concern them." I think if researchers can at least achieve this goal, they go a long way to making their research not only accessible to those interested in this kind of study, but for general scholarship purposes as well. Another point Robson made in Chapter 5 was on page 108, where he is discussing generalizability/external validity and brings up a very good point: "It is easy to guarantee unreliability. Carelessness, casualness and a lack of commitment on the part of the enquirer help, as does a corresponding lack of involvement by participants. Reliability is essentially a quality control issue. Punctilious attention to detail, perseverance and pride in doing a good job are all very important, but organization is the key." I think he's saying that participants in your study may not always be reliable, but with the researcher maintaining attention to detail, pride in your work and organization, reliability can be achieved. I understand that with the constant displacement of the foster care clients from one home to another that it might be hard to gather the research, especially if I have not gotten all the major permissions out of the way beforehand (which could seriously slow down the research process, but I would definitely do that before I started the study as this would be a priority). My plan was to administer the surveys at a large function, such as the Foster Parent Annual Conference where the majority of foster parent and children would be available at one location and probably ask the parents to help with the under 11 kids and the teens to do the survey on their own.

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.

Information Searching

The reason I am interested in picking this topic is because I used to work as an Administrative Assistant type position in a local foster care agency in Columbia. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least. I definitely have a lot more respect for adults who open their homes up to total strangers in an attempt to change their lives for the better. I've seen the kids that come into the program and are transferred from home to home with only a few suitcases and some trash bags full of all their worldly possessions. And out of 60 kids, I only saw two teenagers who enjoyed reading. I wondered if the reason for this was because of their constantly moving lifestyle, of which they have little or no control over, or if it was something else. I thought it would be a great idea for public libraries to reach out to this population group and try to encourage them to read and/or find some way for them to be involved in the library.

I've not seen any articles or research done on my proposed subject matter, so I went to Thomas Cooper Library online to look through their databases, through Gamecock Power Search. I searched for the keywords "foster children, libraries, and literacy." It came up with mostly articles on early childhood literacy, general public outreach programs for Children's Departments, literacy programs for below poverty level kids, information literacy skills, and adult illiteracy. I will have to narrow my search.

The only article so far that may prove useful is one from:

Morrow, Lesley Mandel. "The Impact of a Literature-Based Program on Literacy Achievement, Use of Literature, and Attitudes of Children from Minority Backgrounds" Reading Research Quarterly Vol. 27 No. 3 (Summer, 1992), pp. 250-275.

I searched again, this time only using the terms "foster children" and "library" and got better results. On target resources include:

Terrile, V. C. Where They Live Now: What Public Libraries Can Do for Teens in Foster Care. Voice of Youth Advocates v. 32 no. 5 (December 2009) p. 374-6
The Terrile article led to a website for the foster children magazine called Represent: The Voice of Youth in Care, which I'm hoping maybe I can find on the library's journal listings. This article also pointed the way to another article by VOYA called:

Rex, A. Home for a While [Bibliographical essay]. Voice of Youth Advocates v. 31 no. 5 (December 2008) p. 396-9

Neumark, Victoria. "Something Worth Sharing" TES CAMPAIGN; Time To Care; Pg. 31 No. 4706
This article was about a mentoring/reading program in the UK for foster kids

McClellan, K. From Classroom to Courtroom: Our Role in the Community. Public Libraries v. 48 no. 1 (January/February 2009) p. 62-5
This article was about a program that was started in Kansas, to read to foster kids at home and to give out books for kids that go to court, and also about fiction books on foster care.

I then decided to try to search "foster children" and "reading" hoping that I could get more hits this way. That search was not that helpful, mostly giving me back Social Work essays and articles. One of the only useful articles I found was:

The Letterbox Club: The impact on looked-after children and their carers of a national project aimed at raising achievements in literacy for children aged 7 to 11 in foster care.

Dymoke, Sue; Griffiths, Rose.

Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs (1471-3802)

Mar, 2010. Vol.10,Iss.1;p.52-60
This looked really interesting, but I was unable to find anything more than an abstract on it. I will try at my local public library once the server comes back online.

So then I searched "foster care, teenagers and libraries," which didn't really show any promising results. After exhausting the article search, I decided to look for books available through Thomas Cooper Library. I searched under "foster care" and "libraries" and found mostly government documents. However, I did find an updated book about foster care in Children's literature:

Meese, Ruth Lyn. Family matters : adoption and foster care in children's literature. Santa Barbara, CA.: Libraries Unlimited, 2010.

First Post

My name is Rachel and this blog is for one of my last classes, Intro to Research, for my Masters in Library and Information Science. It is my online research diary. I have to develop a research proposal on a topic of my choosing. Since my focus is in Youth Services in a Public Library, it will probably have to do with that. I'm thinking about doing it on foster children and access to the library and/or literacy, but I haven't nailed down a topic yet. Feel free to post comments below.