Psychology week four assignment

Oh, when it's recording. Oh, yeah, yeah. There we go. Yep, there it is. See? Yep, it was taking just a little bit. I guess I just wanted a little extra tonight. Okay, well, how are you guys feeling about your program evaluation reports so far? Do you feel like it's coming together? I'm still a little bit confused What is confusing to you at this point? Probably the program that I chose I feel like it's a little bit difficult to find the right measures and you know, to, you know, understand how to proceed. Well, we could talk about that a little bit more. I think that's a common challenge. So don't, you know, don't feel, don't feel like you're alone. I'm sure you're not. I'm sure are not the only one. Um, so I'm going to kind of walk you through what you need to do this week, and then we can talk some more about your, you know, what you're trying to measure and possible measures for that. Um, so, um, let's get started. Hi, hi, Lucianda. Do you prefer to be called Lou or Laosina? Lau. Okay, great. Thank you for correcting me because I'm like, I know you shortened it, but I wasn't quite sure. No, you weren't. No, you weren't. Easy. Okay, great. Alright, well, welcome. So we're going to get started. We're going to go over the discussion and the assignment, and then I'll have time at the end if you guys have any questions about your particular outcome. for your program and finding a measure for it. Okay, so obviously this is week four of program evaluation. So this is a busy week, but it's manageable. We're going to focus on selecting your outcome measure and building out the next three sections of your method section. um next week and the week after are a little more tech heavy um because next week you're going to be creating a data file and then in week six you're going to be doing data analysis so the clearer you are this week the easier the next two weeks are going to feel so definitely leaving time today for questions and answer because again those weeks are a little bit more technical work I did open up the week five discussion so you can get a look ahead at that and you know see what you'll be doing some of you have created data files before so that shouldn't be too complicated but if you don't have a measure then you're not gonna really be able to create a data file. So that's why each week builds upon the week before. Okay. So your discussion this week is all about choosing a measure because this is just really a crucial part. Like we said, if you don't have a measure, then what kind of data are you going to have or how are you going to analyze it. So we need to know what we're dealing with. So even though you're only going to be using one measure in your final assessment and your assignment, I want you to think through two possibilities this week and weigh the pros and cons of each of these measures for your particular program. And that way you'll be able to have a better sense of possibly what measure you might want to use for your assignment and moving forward. So let's talk through these different steps. So again, I'd like you to choose two possible measures and for each of them write about pros and cons for each measure um for your specific agency program um so like keep in mind this egi i put after that like is keep in mind like what's the age of your participant so if your participants are adults you don't want to choose a measure for kids and vice versa um You also want to keep in mind their literacy level. So if you're dealing with people where English is a second language, you want to keep the literacy level pretty simple, you know, maybe like a fourth grade level. um you want to keep in mind cultural considerations because obviously some measures may be culturally biased um and also staff capacity you don't want to have like a really complicated measure that requires like clinical training because you're just having the staff that work there administer this so it should be something that people can just complete on their own. So those are some things to think about. Another thing I'd like you to discuss is practical issues such as whether the measure is free, public domain, or whether there's a cost associated with it. If there is a cost associated with it, you know, make sure that's something that you, you believe the agency is already using or doing because you don't want to necessarily add additional costs. It should be easy to administer and require minimal training or costs. I mean, if it's only something like $100 total or something like that, then maybe that cost is worthwhile, but it just, you know, it should be something in your consideration. And then finally, you should wrap up with which measure you're leaning toward and why. So I do have a note here that you do not need to provide validity and reliability information for your measures in the discussion, but you do need to do that in the assignment. I just want to clarify that the discussion's a little bit more brainstorming and, you know, really kind of thinking through a measure that you might use and discussing two different ones so you don't have to have all the full you know extensive information about that instrument's reliability and validity. So in terms of the assignment the assignment builds directly on your discussion so you're going to be continuing the method section and adding the setting the participants the outcomes and the measure. And these follow Klein's structure, and each has specific formatting rules, which I'm going to walk you through. So refer to page 222 in Klein and complete these three sections. And again, I'm going to walk you through each section with an example of what should be included. But before I do that, I want to kind of just walk you through the prior parts of the program evaluation report that you've already worked on. So in week one, you worked on the logic model, which will be your appendix. So if I gave you feedback on that, please update your logic model accordingly because you will put it in the appendix. In week two, you worked on your introductory section, and that's where you gave a brief overview of the agency, the problem, the program, and the evaluation, which will eventually be part of your final report in week seven. So remember, that's all part of the larger report you're going to be assembling in week seven. So if I gave you any feedback on your week one assignment in terms of other things you need to do with week one and two, make sure that you incorporate that. But again, you don't need to I don't want you turning in the introduction section again this week. I just want to remind you of, you know, how these are all building upon each other to take you to the ultimate final report. Okay, so next, the method section includes the program, the definitions, and the design. That's what you returned in last week. I will give you guys feedback on that tomorrow and if you have any feedback on that you should make revisions and then combine that with this new method section. So you will turn in this the full method section this week. So this week you're going to be adding the setting, the participants, the outcomes, and the measures. So before we go into these I want to see if anybody has any questions about the prior parts we've worked on the report so far. Nothing to report. Okay. So sounds like you guys are good to keep going. All right. So let's keep going then. Let's go into what we're adding this week. So this week, the first part that you're going to add is the setting. Now you'll be probably be happy to hear that the setting section is only one sentence long. So I think I keep reiterating this, but your program evaluation report should be pretty clear and concise. We don't want these to be crazy long reports. These are going to be read by agency and maybe funders. So they're, it's a little different than like when you're writing a full blown out dissertation or lit review. So your setting describes where the program occurs. That's the agency type and the environment. And if details aren't available, then you should, you know, just make reasonable assumptions about what's, you know, what the actual setting is. So all you're doing here is identifying where the agents, where the evaluation will physically take place within the agency. That's it. You don't need a lot of detail, no descriptions of the program, no history or context, and just identify the location. So make a reasonable assumption. So where within the agency would the evaluation occur? Like, is there a particular um like if you can tell from looking at the information on the website is there a particular place that meetings occur or um is there a particular building if the exact location's not available just you know just just make assumptions about you know where you think this would take place like a conference room or a lounge or you know whatnot what type of place um the the setting might be um and and that way you're just giving some information about um you know where reasonably we might we might think that this that this actual program evaluation would take place so um you know if it's like a a counseling type of thing. Maybe there's like a mental health setting where it takes place. You know, if it's foster care, maybe it's in the, you know, adoptive family homes. But I don't know, you might be dealing with the people prior to placement. So in that case, maybe it takes place in the agency. You know, just give some thought about where this might take place and attempt to describe that. But again, only one sentence, so pretty brief. Next, I'd like you to talk about your participants. And again, have this as a subheading in bold, left justified, like APA style. Don't write things like section one, section two, section three, because remember, we're pulling it all together and then all that numbering would get messed up anyway. So for your participants, this should be about one paragraph. And this is a short paragraph. It's not complicated, but it does need some specific components. It should include who is included in the evaluation, like approximate age range, eligibility. You know, if it's like, let's say it's foster care, well, they have to be, you know, people in the foster care system or whatnot. If it's a drug ***** program then has to have people who have certain you know alcohol addiction or whatnot um so think about who's included what are the criteria for inclusion um what is the sampling approach for example um you know a particular time range um but all all clients during a particular time period um what's the assessment schedule um that should be like intake and discharge and a reasonable estimate of the sample size. So for example, if you think it's a smaller program or a bigger program, like is it 50 people? Is it approximately 100 people? How many people do you think might be part of this particular program? So don't overthink it. It's, you know, just try to give a reasonable estimate of what this might look like. OK, so, again, keep the paragraph concise and just focused on those logistics. OK, so you're simply describing who will be evaluated and when. And if you don't know other information, then just provide a reasonable estimate and label it as such. Okay, next section. This is what will take the most work is your outcomes and measures. This is one to two paragraphs. And this is the most important part of the assignment. And that's reflected also in the fact that it's the longest part. this is where you demonstrate that your chosen measure makes sense for your outcome and your population. So you should state the name of the instrument, what it measures, and why it makes sense for your outcome and your population, how many items it includes and how it would be scored. and a one-sentence reliability statement. You can include some statistics with that, like Chromebex Alpha. A one-sentence validity information. And if there are other things that it has been correlated with, like other measures or other outcomes, you could state that. And then how improvement will be interpreted. Um, so would we want to look for increases? Like, let's say we want to look for increases in, um, emotional, emotional wellbeing, or do we want to look at decreases? Like we want to look at decreases in PTSD symptoms or decreases in alcohol ***** or whatnot. So that including all these elements ensures that the section is complete and academically grounded. Okay, so just focus only on your selected measure in that outcomes section. Now, here are some examples of low cost and public domain measures. We've talked about some of these before. Now, you don't need to use one of these. I just wanted to give a few examples, like the DASS is a depression, anxiety, and stress scale. The PHQ-9 and the GAD-7 are depression and anxiety screens. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale is designed for use for ages 12 and up and measure self-esteem. The SCL90 is broad symptom patterns. The ASI is substance use severity. The CLA wave 10 panel urine test is for substance use. And that if you do have something with substance use, you would need to have some kind of screening like that in the beginning of your study. And that could be separate from the actual measures, other measure that you use. But those are just some examples. But obviously, the most important thing is that your measure fits your population and it has available reliability and validity indices. so that's a bit of an overview of what we are dealing with this week so now um i would like to turn it over to you guys and see if you have any questions about your particular outcome or your particular measure, and what you might use to assess, you know, your particular outcome for a measure. So this looks like it's three section subheadings, setting participants' outcomes. Yes, that's right. and we're only discussing one measure that's right yeah so again these reports are meant to be pretty concise so we're going to be pretty tailored and the reason why we're only going to focus on one measure is because you have to analyze this and write it up so obviously we're dealing with a pretty short time frame with the eight -week course and your final project being due in end of week seven. So I do want to give you some experience and practice with, you know, the full aspect of doing a program evaluation report. So that's why we're just going to focus on one measure. If you're doing a program evaluation, likely you're going to have more measures, but we just want to kind of keep it simple and streamlined. And I'm just going to end up, I'm going to end up using the one that was required for an SDQ. Okay, so the SDQ was not required. I don't know what you mean by that. Do you mean because I used that as an example earlier in the course? i i did not realize that was an example yeah sorry if that wasn't clear um yeah so i tried to clarify that when i think there were a few students early on who said something about that so don't worry you weren't the only one but yeah those exam those were meant to be examples um Um, so you are not required to use SDQ, but, um, that's a perfectly good one. You know, you can certainly use that. Um, that's not in this example list, but it is, you know, it is, like I said, it was discussed earlier. Does it fit with the outcome that you're, that you're looking at? I guess that would be the main thing. i don't want you to choose something that's mismatched with the outcome you said you wanted to assess it's fine okay great um okay um any other um yes already um adding the the second part of the method section to the first part yes okay and we're turning in the the full method section just yeah the full method section but i mean it's pretty short because obviously last week was shorter as well so um you know there you'll just put both of those together um so watchner i know you said you were a little unsure about a measure for this week. Did you want us to talk about that? Yes. The outcome that I am working with is placement stability. And the measures that I found are placement move rate, time in care, frequency of moves. And I think that placement move rate and frequency of moves are the two more appropriate measures because I'm trying to measure. So, I mean, my outcome is we just seeing placement moves. right so that's that brings up a good yeah that brings up an issue because placement stability is likely like a reliable measure i would think that you could you know assess over time but it doesn't have it's not a psychometric tool where like you would have published validity and reliability information. Um, so you, you, you know, you could, you could write it up as one of your two, like for your discussion this week is one of your two options. Um, but I wonder if If you have other possibilities for an outcome, like trauma or behavioral functioning. Yeah, that was a stress level, emotional stress level, something like that. Yeah. OK, well, that's perfect, because there's definitely things you can you can use for that that would fit this kind of structure where you're supposed to be talking about the number of items, you know, the scoring, the reliability, the validity, you know, that type of thing. So is it okay to go back and pick another outcome? Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Sure. That was my confusion. Yeah, I think it would probably simplify things for you because that way you could still, you know, kind of keep it flowing with that. um and be able to flush it out a little more um yeah that sounds great um any other questions or concerns lao do you have any any questions about your instrument no no i'm good with thank you okay great all right um well i think we're kind of you know cruising right through so um you know you guys are doing a good job i do appreciate um all the hard work and um you know by the end of this week your method section is going to be done and that's great news because that means that you have weeks five through seven to focus more on your results your conclusions and bringing the whole report together so um you know next week you're gonna it's gonna be the svss or jamovie week where you create a data file and so it's really important to use this week to finalize your measure and understand how it works because you're going to be, you know, putting together like hypothetical data for that instrument next week. Okay, so I just want to remind you guys that next week, the class is on Monday at 11. And we do have a shorter week because of Thanksgiving. Because of that, I took out the assignment next week. And all you're doing is creating that data file and running some simple descriptive statistics. It is still due Wednesday at midnight, but I'm not strict about that because it is a holiday. I know some people cook the day before Thanksgiving. So for some people, they may be better. They may want to do that over the weekend instead. But we'll talk about that more on Monday. But I am going to be flexible about that deadline. it just has to be done during the week next week so all right thank you guys for coming um i'm still here for a few minutes if anybody has any other questions thank you good night