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.

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.

Brainstorming

Fellow classmate Jessica K. found this resource called bubbl.us where you can brainstorm in bubble forms. It is awesome for me so I can put my ideas out there to mull over and see what I want to expand on and link to the rest of my ideas. So here is my brainstorm about the research project:

Framework for Research Design

In Chapter 4, Robson puts forth five components of research design. These are:
Purpose: What is the study trying to achieve and why is it being done?
Theory: What theory will guide your study? What conceptual framework links the phenomena you are studying?
 Research questions: To what questions is the research geared to providing answers? What do you need to know to achieve the purposes of the study?
Methods: What techniques will you use to collect the data, and how will be it be analyzed and deemed to be trustworthy?
Sampling Strategy: From whom will you seek data? Where and when?

I will now attempt to answer these questions in order to put more order to my research design. 

Purpose: I would like to discover if foster kids are affected by socioeconomic factors (education and financial situations of their foster parents and biological parents) and/or constant displacement and/or age affects their reading/literacy and if this in turn affects going to the library.
Theory: This is the only part of the research design I'm not 100% sure of what they mean.
Research questions:  I would like to look at how their age may or may not affect whether the child reads or goes to the library, how the foster kid's backgrounds may or may not affect their literacy and whether or not they choose to visit the library, if their FP and/or bio parents encouraged reading or read to them, are they readers now and/or go to programs at the library - if no, what could the library do to encourage use?
Methods: I want to use questionnaire after I get parental permission (and possibly permission from foster care agency such as DSS), for the children and maybe even a separate questionnaire for the foster parents.
Sampling Strategy:  I would like to do the questionnaire with foster kids ages 5-18 (this age group may change) and possibly foster parents in my current county, maybe even at a particular agency to get a smaller sample group.