Presentation 1- Research Flashcards
What is research?
is the systematic examination (or re-examination) of empirical data, collected by someone first-hand, concerning the social or psychological forces operating in a situation
What is the objective of social research?
Social Research seeks to achieve the goals of description, prediction, explanation and evaluation. Social Research can also can also involve basic research or applied research.
What is research methods
The links between social research and human service practice can be identified in five focal areas.
In order to organize our thinking about the applications of research to the human services, these five focal areas in which this linkage occurs:
1.Understanding human functioning in social environments.
2. Needs assessments.
3. Assessment of client functioning.
4. Program evaluation
5. Practice effectiveness evaluation.
What does social research do?
Conducting accurate and unbiased research on members of minority groups confronts social researchers with special problems. Research and practice follow similar parallel paths in approaching a problem. Social research studies social and psychological factors that affect human behaviour.
Types of research
Description, prediction, explanation, or evaluation.
Descriptive Research
Descriptive research has as its goal description, or the attempt to discover facts or describe reality. Descriptive research, for example, might deal with such questions as: ‘What are people’s attitudes toward welfare? How widespread is child abuse? How many people avail themselves of the services of home health-care workers?
Predictive Research
Predictive research focuses on prediction, or making projections about what may occur in the future or in other settings. Insurance companies, for example, make use of sophisticated actuarial schemes for predicting the risks involved in insuring people or property. Based on past descriptive research on deaths and injuries, they can project how long people with certain characteristics are likely to live or the degree of likelihood that they will suffer injuries. Insurance companies, for example, make actuarial predictions based on past statistical associations.
Explanatory research
Explanatory research involves explaining or determining why or how something occurred. Explanatory research, for example, would go beyond describing rates of juvenile delinquency or even predicting who will engage in delinquent acts. Explanatory research would focus on why certain people become delinquents. The goal of explanation may appear to be quite similar to that of prediction, but there is a difference: One can make predictions without an accompanying explanation.
Evaluation research
Evaluation research focuses on evaluation, or the use of scientific research methods to plan intervention programs, to monitor the implementation of new programs and the operation of existing ones, and to determine how effectively programs or clinical practices achieve their goals. Evaluation research can also determine whether a program has unintended consequences that are either desirable or undesirable.
What is applied research?
research designed with a practical outcome in mind and with the assumption that some group or society as a whole, will gain specific benefits from the research.
What do Behaviour and Social Environments Human Service Providers do?
They enhance people’s coping abilities, improve the operation of social systems, and participate in the development of social policy, to name a few. All these activities rest on an understanding of the behavior of the people to whom services are provided and a comprehension of the social environment in which they function.
Research can provide much of this knowledge.
Program Evaluation (long)
In the past few decades, we have seen the development of many large, ambitious, and expensive programs intended to cope with social problems and provide services to individuals.
Along with the growth of these programs has emerged an increasing concern over their results: Do they achieve their intended goals?
These programs are costly, and some evaluation is needed to assess whether resources are being used effectively. Equally important, a program that fails to achieve its goals leaves a problem unsolved or a service undelivered.
Needs Assessment, Social and Psychological research
Needs Assessment, Social and Psychological research can also be used to make an accurate assessment of the need for various forms of service and suggest alternative strategies for meeting those needs. (Rossi and Freeman, 1989; McKillip, 1987) The purpose of this research is to determine whether a problem exists, to indicate the severity of the problem, and to estimate the number and characteristics of people adversely affected by the problem. Needs assessment research is often highly descriptive rather than explanatory or predictive.
What is Program evaluation?
is the use of scientific research techniques to assess the results of a program and evaluate whether the program as currently designed achieves its stated goals.
