Friday, 14 January 2005 - 8:00 AM

This presentation is part of: Secondary Analysis of NSCAW: Effects of Social Supports, Special Caregiver Needs and Family Structure on the Well-being of Children Receivng In-home Child Welfare Services

Advanced Seminar in Children’s Services Research: Teaching Advanced Research Skills to Doctoral Students

This paper discusses the rational for and teaching methods used in the seminar that resulted in the 4 papers presented in this symposium. The seminar was designed to address the need for advanced research preparation among social work doctoral candidates. Although typical social work doctoral curriculums include research methods and statistics courses at basic and advanced levels, it is less common to find hands-on learning opportunities that involve experience in the research process from question identification and conceptualization to data management and advanced statistical analysis to refining analyses for drawing valid conclusions from data. This seminar was designed to provide advanced research experience to students prior to their dissertation research.

The objectives of the course were as follows: 1) To critically analyze emerging issues in children’s services, 2) To provide hands-on, collaborative, secondary analysis research experience for doctoral students, 3) To provide students experience in preparing a research plan and an article for publication based on teams’ work for the course, 4) To meet students’ pre-dissertation research requirements (a requirement of the program), 5) To serve as a dissertation seminar for students interested in using NSCAW for their dissertations.

The course used empirically validated learning methods including cooperative learning, active learning and modeling. Cooperative learning was achieved through collaborative student groups that developed a unique research project and worked on the project as a group from start to finish. Each group was self-identified and typically contained students with a range of skills in various aspects of the research process (conceptualization, knowledge of the relevant literature, data management and data analysis, and research writing experience). In each collaborative group students taught each other skills based on areas of their expertise. In addition student groups were responsible for hand-on experience in communication, negotiation and conflict resolution that are parts of the research collaboration process. Active learning methods were used in the completely hand-on nature of the course. Each student collaborative group reviewed the literature, created a working data set from the NSCAW database, carried out data analysis and presented their work in progress several times over the 2 semesters. Modeling was achieved through team-teaching of the course as well as use of the instructors’ research project as a case study.

Conceptual rigor served as the cornerstone of the coherent research project. We attempted to carry out the every aspect of the research process in the seminar. This included the role and use of knowledgeable experts and statistical consultants. The course approach was to illustrate the major debates in the field such as pros and cons of complex sample weighting strategies, and controversy over change score analysis. Emphasis was placed on debate about substantive and methodological issues in each study, including taking in different points of view while still making coherent progress on the project. Ideas for replication and estimates of costs of this type of learning experience are included in the presentation.

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