Respond to at least two colleagues from the perspective of an...

Respond to at least two colleagues from the perspective of an interested stakeholder for the program by doing the following: 

Provide a brief description of the stakeholder role that you are taking. 

Provide an evaluation of the group research design that they have chosen and the measurement criteria they have generated. 

Provide support based on your evaluation. 

Ask questions about the plan for research design and the purpose of the evaluation from your chosen stakeholder perspective.

• Provide a brief description of the foster parent training program (1-2 sentences).

There is one training program that they have already implemented and have been using, but they have a new training program that they are trying to put in place of the old one. This training program is 3-hour training sessions that are done on a bi-weekly basis for 6 weeks. Although the old and new programs are done at the same time frame the focuses of the programs will be very different. Three of the sites will implement this new program immediately while the other sites will use the old training program. The primary focus of the work is on foster care.

• Identify which group research design you will use (from those outlined in the Resources as appropriate for the Program Evaluation case study) and state why.

I would use the quasi-experimental design for this, this design helps focus on one group of the foster parents. There will be one group pretest-posttest will be helpful in measuring the active foster families in the program already.  This design allows to measure the effectiveness of a training program statistics may be amassed through measuring a baseline previous to enforcing an intervention (Dudley,2020). The final results will come after the intervention which is the most informative to find the relationship between the two.

• Identify the outcomes to be measured.

One outcome would include the quality of skilled/educated foster parents that the training solidifies. Another outcome would be the usefulness of the old program vs. the new one, relating to foster parental needs as well as foster child needs. Any gaps or disruptions within the programs. In addition, surveys will be sent to schools/daycare to be able to assess the children, asking about behaviors, mental capacity and overall affect of the children.

• Describe specific measurements that you will use to assess those outcomes. 

Using a qualitative approach is going to give the best results as far as expertise subjective experiences, so we can understand culture, unique context and help generate new ideas. (Dudley,2020)

• Explain which data collection method you will use and why.

For my data collection I think interviews with the foster families as well as surveys could provide adequate and substantial data. The interviews would be conducted one at the beginning of the collection and one at the end. I think surveys would be a good inclusion for those who may not be comfortable talking out loud and may feel more apt to tell the truth if it is on paper and anonymous.

• Specify who will collect the data and how the data will be collected. 

Two members of the leadership team will collect the data. The interviews will be done at the start of the program and at the end, surveys will be done at the same times. The interviews can be done in person or over the phone, the surveys will be sent via mail/email.

Dudley, J. R. (2020). Social work evaluation: Enhancing what we do (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Walden University, LLC. (2022). Social work case studies Links to an external site.

Links to an external site. [Interactive media]. https://waldenu.instructure.comNavigate to the Planning a Program Evaluation case study.