PS

PSY 638 Final Project Guidelines and Rubric

Overview

The final project for this course is the creation of a grant proposal.

The assessment for this course is to construct a grant proposal that targets a current area of developmental, behavioral, or diagnostic need for your community’s children or adolescents. The final project represents an authentic demonstration of competency because it requires you to apply concepts from across the child and adolescent curriculum to compose an original grant proposal for a theoretically supported, age-specific, and effective intervention program. Some terms grant proposals commonly use include problem identification, prevalence, assessment of resources, the impact of the problem, and implementation plan. The critical elements listed in the prompt reveal the meaning of these grant terms. The prompt asks you to devise a grant proposal to submit in the field of psychology. Grant proposals may request funding for research, training, institutional upgrades, nonprofit center grants, funding opportunities, grants for children’s programs, or grants for specific outreach programs, such as engaging underrepresented cultures. This task aims to assess your understanding of concepts from across the child and adolescent curriculum.

Some real-world examples of grant proposal ideas have included:

School/Educational Setting Orchard Middle School has more than 50 at-risk students whose reading performance directly affects their self-esteem and negative behavior issues. The school submitted a grant proposal to support the development of a program to help all students with poor reading skills learn to read at grade level. The program would also help them increase their reading speed, comprehension, reading attention span, and overall sense of worth, esteem, and achievement. Studies have shown those who do better in school fare better with stable mental health.

Outpatient Mental Health The Open Arms Family Center requested a grant of $250,000 to contribute to the start-up funds for a family homeless shelter and mental health services. As an innovative, all-inclusive shelter program, the center aims to provide for 10 families with children under five experiencing homelessness. The center is committed to its mission of decreasing the overall number of homeless families in the Metro Boston area and working to break the cycle of homelessness.

Community Outreach Healthy Tomorrows aims to stimulate innovative community-based programs that employ prevention strategies to promote nationwide access to healthcare for children and their families. Funding supports direct-service projects, not research projects. Healthy Tomorrows supports family-centered initiatives that implement innovative resource approaches to promote community; define preventive child health and developmental objectives for vulnerable children and their families, especially those with limited access to quality health services; foster cooperation among community organizations, agencies, and families; involve pediatricians and other pediatric, child, and adolescent mental health professionals; build community and statewide partnerships among professionals in health, education, social services, government, and business to achieve self-sustaining programs to ensure healthy children and families.

Healthy Tomorrows requested a grant proposal of $10,000 to conduct a needs analysis for a meal-delivery program to serve its less-mobile community members.

Review the grant-writing resources available in Modules One and Seven.

The project includes three milestones you will submit throughout the course to scaffold learning and ensure quality final submissions. You will submit these milestones in Modules Three, Five, and Seven. The final submission will occur in Module Nine.

In this assignment, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following course outcomes:

• Assess contemporary theories of development for their strengths and weaknesses in addressing current developmental, behavioral, and diagnostic issues for children and adolescents
• Critique the major criteria used to classify children and adolescents with specific disorders established by the American Psychiatric Association
• Evaluate the influence of individual, familial, environmental, cultural, and political factors for their current impact on the diagnostic process for children and adolescents
• Evaluate child and adolescent development resources and support services in terms of accessibility, organization, funding, and overall effectiveness
• Assess the ethical implications of research and program development in the field of child and adolescent psychology
• Analyze the effectiveness of theoretically-supported intervention strategies to address the current developmental, behavioral, and diagnostic needs of children and adolescents

Prompt

The grant proposal will contain the critical elements listed below.

1. Problem Identification: Research and identify resources for a specific developmental, behavioral, or diagnostic need for children or adolescents in your community (3–4 pages):
   1. Prevalence: Determine a necessary program or service by examining the current needs of your community’s children or adolescents, using the standards established by the American Psychiatric Association.
      1. What issue have you chosen to address? Who is affected? What data will you use to point to the prevalence of this issue? Begin your paper with a clear and concise identification of the problem as it exists within your community. Support the problem identification with published data, links, or citations.
      2. What is the necessary service or program? How will it address the needs you have examined?
   2. Assessment of Resources: Evaluate available and needed resources in your community.
      1. Evaluate the resources available for providing a program or service like the one you identified. This is an essential part of justifying a grant request. You must clearly articulate the limitations of current services and describe the service gap your proposal would fill. Support your assessment of resources with published data, links, or citations.
      2. Determine necessary but unavailable resources and explain their importance in providing the identified program or service.
   3. Impact of Problem: Describe the impact of the problem on individuals, families, and the community. Construct an impact statement based on the prevalence of the identified issue and the lack of community resources. This section is where you will justify the urgency or need for your proposal by describing the potential impacts of not addressing the problem proactively.
      1. Articulate how the lack of the identified program or service impacts the community.
      2. How is the lack of available resources exacerbating the issue?
2. Literature Review: Conduct a review of available literature around the developmental theory concerning your identified issue (3–4 pages):
   1. Problem/Need: Begin your literature review with a concise statement of your research question (identifying the problem you wish to study). Using American Psychiatric Association criteria and current professional research publications, describe how the identified developmental, behavioral, or diagnostic problem is identified and diagnosed in children and adolescents.
   2. Theory Survey and Comparison: Survey at least two relevant developmental theories. At least one theory must be current, and the others may be classic or current.
      1. Identify the factors that contribute to the problem’s prevalence according to these theories.
      2. How do these different theories compare? What are their contrasting opinions about the prevalence and diagnosis of your identified problem?
3. Intervention Strategy: Research and justify the selection of a theoretically supported and effective intervention strategy for addressing the target issue (2–3 pages):
   1. Efficacy: Analyze and critique at least two evidence-based intervention strategies for inconsistencies and effectiveness. You can find examples of evidence-based intervention strategies in the course readings.
      1. Critically examine intervention strategies for consistency with current developmental theories.
      2. How effective were these strategies in addressing their respective issues? To what extent would these intervention strategies address the issue identified in your community?
   2. Selection: Select one evidence-based intervention strategy and justify your selection based on its effectiveness and the individual, familial, environmental, cultural, and political factors. Your strategy should be appropriate for your age-specific population.
   3. Ethics: Analyze the selected evidence-based intervention strategy for possible ethical and legal issues from the perspective of the provider and from the perspective of the client. Refer and cite as needed to an appropriate, relevant, professional code of ethics such as the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct.
4. Implementation Plan: Construct a plan for implementation of the selected intervention strategy in your community (4–5 pages):
   1. Narrative: Compose a narrative to describe the setting, personnel, target population, length of time for service, and capacity of the proposed program.
   2. Training: Formulate and thoroughly describe a strategy for personnel training according to the selected intervention strategy.
   3. Assessment: Recommend and thoroughly describe an assessment plan to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention strategy.
   4. Ethics: Assess the ethical and legal implications of implementing the intervention strategy in your community. Refer and cite as needed to an appropriate, relevant, professional code of ethics such as the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct.
5. Closing Statement: Summarize your grant proposal/recommendation, paying careful attention to the audience you must convince.

Milestones

Milestone One: Problem Identification Draft In Module Three, you will create a draft of the Problem Identification section of your final grant proposal. In this assignment, you will consider the professional environment you will seek upon graduation. You will also consider a potential problem within that professional environment that could be solved through your recommended program, research, or initiative. This milestone is graded with the Milestone One Rubric.

Milestone Two: Literature Review Draft In Module Five, you will submit a draft of the Literature Review section of your final grant proposal. Your draft will contain a narrative in which you will use professional journals, texts, and resources to provide a comprehensive examination of the identified problem from the perspective of current developmental theories. Providing examples relevant or similar to your organizational environment is imperative for those reviewing the grant to gain an experiential perspective of the grant truly. This milestone is graded with the Milestone Two Rubric.

Milestone Three: Intervention Strategy and Implementation Plan Draft In Module Seven, you will submit a draft of your grant proposal’s Intervention Strategy and Implementation Plan section. This milestone is graded with the Milestone Three Rubric.

Final Submission: Grant Proposal In Module Nine, you will submit your final grant proposal. The final submission will include responses to all critical elements listed above. It also should assemble the milestones into a single document. Revise each milestone area in response to the feedback provided during the milestone submissions across the course. Grant agencies will return strong grant applications with suggested or required changes before approval, so this practice mimics the actual process. Submit these sections in one complete, polished artifact containing all of the critical elements of the final product. The final submission will be graded using the Final Project Rubric.

What to Submit

Your grant proposal must be 12 to 16 pages in length (plus a cover page and references) and must be written in APA format. Use double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, and one-inch margins. Use appropriate formatting according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: 7th Edition, including a separate title page and a separate reference page. The title page and reference page do not count toward your page total for this assignment.

Final Project Rubric

Criteria	Exemplary (100%)	Proficient (90%)	Needs Improvement (70%)	Not Evident (0%)	Value
Problem Identification: Prevalence	The submission provides comprehensive research evidence of the existence and prevalence of the community’s identified problem/ need and provides real-world examples to support the argument	The submission provides published data that evidences the identified problem is a prevalent problem/ need for the community	The submission provides limited data to support that the identified problem is a prevalent problem/ need for the community	The submission lacks credible research data to support that the identified problem is a prevalent problem/need for the community	5
Problem Identification: Assessment of Resources	The submission contains an extensive and comprehensive list of community resources that may be related to the services necessary for addressing the identified problem/ need, as well as a detailed description of the limited capacity to address the identified problem and real-world examples to support claims	The submission provides evidence in the form of links, citations, and a description of local resources for their limited capacity to address the identified problem	The submission provides evidence in the form of links, citations, and a description of local resources, yet it may be lacking in the examination of the resources’ capacity to address the identified problem	The submission provides limited evidence in the form of links, citations, and a description of local resources without addressing the capacity of the resources to address the identified problem	10
Problem Identification: Impact of Problem	The submission provides research-supported evidence in a highly detailed and professional manner that demonstrates the comprehensive impact the identified problem has been proven to have on individuals, families, and the community and grounds claims in actual examples and relevant theory	The submission provides research-supported evidence of how the identified problem will impact individuals, families, and the community if the problem is not addressed proactively	The submission provides research evidence of the general impact of the problem without considering the specific community	The submission discusses the general impact of the problem without considering the specific community or without providing research evidence to support the impact of the identified problem	5
Literature Review: Problem/Need	The submission provides a comprehensive examination of the identified problem using current professional research publications and draws unique connections and insights from the literature	The submission contains substantial evidence that the identified problem/ need has been explored using current professional research publications	The submission contains limited evidence that the identified problem/ need has been explored using current professional research publications	Submission does not contain evidence that the identified problem/need has been explored using current professional research publications; research may be substantially out of date, from non-credible sources, or absent from the submission	10
Literature Review: Theory Survey and Comparison	The submission provides a comprehensive review of the literature that demonstrates professional consideration of current developmental theories for their approach to the identified problem; this review should include an examination of the competing or conflicting theoretical approaches to the identified problem/ need and an illustration from a real-world example to support the approach	The submission provides a review of the literature that demonstrates professional consideration of current developmental theories for their approach to the identified problem; this review should include an examination of the competing or conflicting theoretical approaches to the identified problem/ need	The submission provides a review of the literature that demonstrates consideration of current developmental theories for their approach to the identified problem; the examination of the competing or conflicting theoretical approaches to the identified problem/ need may be lacking in detail or absent from this submission	The submission lacks a review of the literature for demonstrating consideration of current developmental theories for their approach to the identified problem, and the examination of the competing or conflicting theoretical approaches to the identified problem/ need may be lacking in detail or absent from this submission	15
Intervention Strategy: Efficacy	The submission evidences a comprehensive review of the current literature to demonstrate professional consideration of evidence-based intervention strategies for the identified problem/ need (considers a minimum of two intervention strategies at a highly detailed level) and uses real-world examples to illustrate claims	The submission evidences an extensive review of the current literature to demonstrate consideration of evidence-based intervention strategies for the identified problem/ need (considers a minimum of two intervention strategies at a highly detailed level)	The submission evidences a basic review of the current literature to demonstrate consideration of evidence-based intervention strategies for the identified problem/ need; submission may consider only a single intervention strategy	The submission evidences a selective or minimal review of the current literature to demonstrate consideration of evidence-based intervention strategies for the identified problem/ need, and the submission considers only a single intervention strategy	10
Intervention Strategy: Selection	The submission evidences a clear selection of an evidence-based intervention strategy that has strong support from the theoretical and research support as it relates to the age-specific population and community through the use of specific, relevant details and real-world examples	The submission evidences a clear selection of an evidence-based intervention strategy based on theoretical and research support considering the age-specific population and community	The submission evidences a clear selection of an evidence-based intervention strategy that may lack a clear basis in theoretical and research support, or it may not clearly consider the age-specific population and community	The submission evidences the selection of an evidence-based intervention strategy that lacks a clear basis in theoretical and research support, and it fails to clearly consider the age-specific population and community	10
Intervention Strategy: Ethics	The submission provides a comprehensive review of the ethical and legal implications for using the selected evidence-based intervention strategy that considers provider as well as client concerns at a high level and provides real-world examples to support claims	The submission provides an extensive review of the ethical and legal implications for using the selected evidence-based intervention strategy that considers provider as well as client concerns	The submission provides a review of the ethical and legal implications for using the selected evidence-based intervention strategy that may only consider either provider or client concerns	The submission provides a selective or minimal review of the ethical and legal implications of using the selected evidence-based intervention strategy, and it only considers either provider or client concerns	5
Implementation Plan: Narrative	The submission presents a highly detailed narrative to describe the setting, personnel, target population, length of time for service, and capacity of the proposed program at a well-organized and implementation-ready level, incorporating real-world examples as support	The submission presents a detailed narrative to sufficiently describe the setting, personnel, target population, length of time for service, and capacity of the proposed program	The submission presents a narrative that may lack detail to sufficiently describe one or more of the following key components: the setting, personnel, target population, length of time for service, and capacity of the proposed program	The submission presents a narrative that lacks detail to sufficiently describe two or more of the following key components: the setting, personnel, target population, length of time for service, and capacity of the proposed program	5
Implementation Plan: Training	The submission presents a highly organized and detailed plan that accounts for the comprehensive training needs of the essential personnel who will supply the services outlined in the intervention strategy and incorporates real-world examples as support	The submission presents a detailed plan that accounts for the training needs of the essential personnel who will supply the services outlined in the intervention strategy	The submission presents a plan that accounts for key training needs of the essential personnel who will supply the services outlined in the intervention strategy; this plan may lack the level of detail necessary to demonstrate full consideration of training needs	The submission lacks a plan that accounts for the training needs of the essential personnel who will supply the services outlined in the intervention strategy, or the plan as presented is minimal for meeting the training needs for the selected intervention	5
Implementation Plan: Assessment	The submission provides a highly detailed plan for assessing the effectiveness of the program/ intervention strategy and draws upon relevant examples to illustrate (an essential component of grant submission that allows for programs to be considered “evidence based”)	The submission provides a detailed plan for assessing the effectiveness of the program/ intervention strategy (an essential component of grant submission that allows for programs to be considered “evidence based”)	The submission provides a general concept for assessing the effectiveness of the program/ intervention strategy, yet it may lack clear direction or statistical concepts to meet the data collection goal	The submission provides a concept too general for assessing the effectiveness of the program/ intervention strategy	5
Implementation Plan: Ethics	The submission evidences a comprehensive assessment of the ethical and legal considerations for implementing the intervention strategy; it is grounded in real-world examples	The submission evidences a strong assessment of the ethical and legal considerations for implementing the intervention strategy	The submission evidences an assessment of the ethical and legal considerations for implementing the intervention strategy; it may lack attention to one or more elements necessary for a sound ethical approach	The submission provides minimal consideration of the ethical and legal implications; it lacks attention to two or more essential elements necessary for a sound ethical approach	5
Closing Statement	The submission evidences a closing statement that comprises the main points of the grant in a logical fashion	The submission evidences a closing statement that comprises the main points of the grant	The submission evidences a closing statement but fails to comprise all of the main points of the grant	The submission does not evidence a closing statement	5
Articulation of Response	The submission is free of errors related to APA, citations, grammar, spelling, syntax, and organization and is presented in a professional and easy-to-read format	The submission has no major errors related to APA, citations, grammar, spelling, syntax, or organization	The submission has major errors related to APA, citations, grammar, spelling, syntax, or organization that negatively impact the readability and articulation of main ideas	The submission has critical errors related to APA, citations, grammar, spelling, syntax, or organization that prevent understanding of ideas	5
Total:	100%