Research Methods - Exam 1
Outputs
"deliverables." They are items or units of service that the program produces or delivers. •Prime attribute: that it is countable. •May be thought of as a measure of how much work the program did in a given time period. a. In a counseling/ therapy program, the main ones are the number of clients who were counseled in a given time period. Another important one might be the number of hours of counseling that were delivered in this time period. b. In meals-on-wheels program the number of clients to whom meals were delivered in a given time period would be a major output. So would the number of meals delivered in a given time period.
What is an Institutional Review Board?
(IRB) The board that determines whether or not your research is ethical and can be funded.
What do social work researchers under this principle need?
1. A clear understanding of the impact of culture on human and social processes generally and on evaluation processes specifically. 2. Skills in cross-cultural communication to ensure that they can effectively interact with people from diverse backgrounds.
What are the major sources of knowledge discussed in the textbook?
1. Authority 2. Tradition 3. Experience 4. Intuition 5. The Research Method
What are the four components of cultural competency?
1. Awareness of one's own cultural worldview, 2. Attitude towards cultural differences, 3. Knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews, and 4. Cross-cultural skills mainly relating to communication.
What are the three levels in the classification and continuum of research that this chapter defines and explains? Be able to recognize the definitions and the goals of each level.
1. Exploratory 2. Descriptive 3. Explanatory
What don't they actually know?
1. In what amounts? 2. What is the level of service quality? 3. What results, accomplishments, or impacts are being achieved? 4. What is the total cost?
According to Krain what are the dimensions by which programs are evaluated?
1. Inputs 2. Process 3. Outputs 4. Outcomes 5. Target effectiveness
Major unethical research projects that gave rise to the needs for the human rights protections that now must be part of every research project on humans.
1. Nazi Experimentation on Humans, Dr. Josef Mengele, WW II 2. Unit (Project) 731, Japanese Experimentation on Humans, Gen. Shiro Ishii, WW II 3. Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, US Public health Service, 1932 - 72 4. Obedience to Authority Study, Stanley Milgram, Yale University, 1961 5. Stanford Prison Experiment, Phillip G. Zimbardo, 1971
Per Dr. Krain: The following categories of people cannot be assumed to be competent to give their consent.
1. People with active psychotic symptoms. 2. People who are under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. 3. Children and the advanced elderly. 4. People with mental illness 5. Unconscious people
There are three overall categories of benefit
1. Problem-specific benefit: The tracks improvement (or lack of such) in terms of the problem being directly addressed by the service provided. Did a client who was being treated for OCD actually get cured of OCD, or were the OCD symptoms greatly reduced? Was a malnourished client who was started on meals-on-wheels program increase the number of calories consumed as a result of being on that program or did the percentage of RDAs that client consumed increase as a result of being on that program? 2. Generalized benefit: This tracks improvement (or lack of such) in other aspects of the client's life. Regardless of what service the client is getting are there improvements in overall aspects of the client's life? Is the client... Healthier? More active? Less socially isolated? Better able to care for himself or herself? Going to the doctor or clinic less? Spending less time in bed? Reading more books? Going to church more often? Visiting more with family and friends? 3. Community benefit: This tracks benefit on a wider scale of impact than just to clients by themselves. As a result of a human service program do things in the community get better? If you start a new substance abuse program in a community, do crime rates go down? Do the rates of school dropouts go down? Do the rates of teenage homelessness go down? Does the number of prostitutes go down, or does the rate of arrests for prostitution go down? These are examples of community benefit.
Two ways of minimizing problems with controlled experiments:
1. The principle of Equipoise: if you truly don't know whether the treatment is effective or not, then you are genuinely equal in your treatment of both groups. 2. Delayed treatment version: give the treatment to the controlled group after the experiment is over, because eventually both receive the effective treatment group. =)
What are the research roles that social workers engage in? Be able to recognize descriptions of each of these roles.
1. The research consumer: Keeping up with the latest developments in the field by attending conferences, reading books and journals, and paying attention tot the results derived from research studies. Pg. 18 2. The creator and disseminator of knowledge: Project investigator, research task force leader. Pg. 18 3. Contributing Partner -¬‐ Record data, research task force member, assisting in research. Pg. 18
According to M & K, why should we adopt performance measurement?
1. They have the potential to improve the management of human service programs. 2. They have the potential to affect the allocation of resources among human service programs and non-human service programs. 3. They may well be a forced choice for most human service programs. Funding sources, both governmental and nongovernmental, are increasingly adopting performance accountability and performance measurement. In some instances, funding sources may prescribe the use of specific performance measures as a precondition to receiving contracts and grants.
What are the barriers to effective communication and relationships?
1.Ethnocentrism: Using our own standards of artistry, taste, and culture to judge what is going on in other cultures. 2.Enculturation: The acquisition of culture by an individual through a variety of processes. 3.Stereotyping: Pictures in the head. They are not accurate.
Potential Uses of Lit Reviews:
1.Helping to bring clarity and focus to a research question. 2.Helping to identify gaps. 3.Preventing duplication of knowledge. 4.Helping to broaden the knowledge base. 5.Helping to contextualize the research project. 6.Helping to improve a study's methodology. 7.Assisting in identifying opposing views. Pg. 38
What should the theoretical framework do?
1.Highlight the main thrust of the academic conversation you are entering. 2.Note the similarities and differences between themes and theories, agreements and disagreements among authors, and the bearing that these have on your research topic. 3.Sets up key concepts, interpretations, approaches, claims, foundations, principles and other items that will influence the design of your structure and how you will sort the information and analyze the findings of your study. Pg. 44
What are the criteria for a good literature review?
1.It must cover the main aspects of your study and be fair in the treatment of authors. 2.It should do justice to the author's arguments before critiquing them. 3.It should be topical. 4.It shouldn't be confined to Internet sources. 5.It should be well organized around your research questions and key concepts, rather than being summaries of what you have read.
What are the stages or aspects of the reading you must do for a literature review?
1.Preview: in which you do a road and superficial sweep of the literature. 2.Overview: in which you slightly engage with the material. 3.Inview: in which you read very carefully for understanding of the material.
What are the ingredients of an informed consent form?
1.The participants are being asked to participate in a research study. 2. That participation is voluntary, and that the participant my discontinue participation at any time without penalty or loss of benefits t which he or she is otherwise entitled (e.g. in their standing as a patient, student, or employee). 3.The names of the investigators and their affiliations. 4. The purposes of the research, simply explained. 5. What the procedures will be. 6. The expected duration of participation. 7. Any reasonably foreseeable risks of discomforts. 8. Any safeguards to minimize the risks. 9. Any benefits to the participant or to others that may reasonably be expected from the research study. 10. In cases where an incentive is offered, a description of the incentive and of how and under what conditions it is to be obtained. 11. Appropriate alternative procedures or courses of treatment, if applicable. 12. The, if any, to which confidentiality of records identifying the participant will be maintained. Pg. 53
What questions must the literature review answer?
1.What do you consider to be the most important theories and perspectives to arise from the literature? How have these affected your understanding of your topic? 2.How does your research question link with the state of knowledge as reflected in the literature? 3.What questions are raised by the literature that your research study addresses? 4.Has anyone ever done this before? What partial answers to your research question have been found before? How did previous researchers to about asking such questions? What methodological issues are raised by the literature in question? 5.In what way is your topic valid, important, and doable? How will your research study add to the literature?
According to M & K, what should human services administrators or managers know about their program?
1.Who are their clients? 2.What are their demographic characteristics? 3.What are their social or presenting problems? 4.What services are they receiving?
What is the definition of "a program?"
A major ongoing agency activity or service. Pg. 3
What should be done when a research participant is incapable of giving informed consent?
A parent, guardian, social worker, spouse, or someone to who the participant's welfare is important must consent. Pg. 51
What is the principle of "respect for people?"
A principle set out by the American Evaluation Association in 2004.
What is the definition of social work research?
A systematic and objective inquiry that utilized the research method to solve human problems and creates new knowledge that is generally applicable tot the social work profession Pg. 24
What is a literature review?
A way of reporting to your reader on the academic conversation in which you are planning to participate. Cooper and Hedges (1994) a literature review uses as its database reports of primary or original scholarship and does not report new primary scholarship itself. The primary reports used in the literature may be verbal, but in the vast majority of cases are written documents. The types of scholarships may be empirical, theoretical, critical/analytical, or methodological in names. Pg. 37
Equipoise
Also known as the uncertainty principle (you are uncertain whether the treatment will work or not) Pg. 68
Which provides greater protection to research participants?
Anonymity
When is informed consent required?
Before you involve any human being in a research study. Pg. 51, Chap 4
What are the elements of evidence-based practice?
Clinical Expertise, Best Evidence, Client Values
What is the difference between confidentiality and anonymity?
Confidentiality is when one has agreed not to share know information about a participant. Anonymity is when one does not have the information about the participant because it has not been supplied. Pg. 59-60
What is the difference between a CONSENT form and an ASSENT form? When must each be used?
Consent forms need to be signed by adults. Assent forms must be signed by non-adults: children and adolescents. Pg. 53
Basic Systems Model
Customers and consumers either like a programs outputs or they don't Inputs: (staff, training, clients-)--Program--Output: (In-home services) --Feedback: (Pay)-- For a nonprofit: Feedback would be whether or not the need was being met or not. You would find this out by doing research. One problem with this model is that it does not distinguish between outputs and inputs.
According to Krain, what are the differences between the Effectiveness and Efficiency of human service programs?
EFFECTIVENESS is not cost-dependent. It is the idea of getting the job done regardless of cost. In many areas of program function just getting the job done is the key thing. It is not that officials are mindless of cost, but unless costs get outrageously out of control, the main thing is just getting the job done. EFFICIENCY is directly cost-dependent. It is a question of: Could the same work be done at less cost, or could more work be done for the same cost?
Which perspective is often considered the highest form of performance accountability?
Effectiveness
What is is the process by which children learn to behave, think, and interact in ways that are appropriate to their own culture?
Enculturation: The acquisition of culture by an individual through a variety of processes.
What is the tendency to judge others and other cultures by the standards of our own beliefs and values?
Ethnocentrism: Using our own standards of artistry, taste, and culture to judge what is going on in other cultures.
What are the factors that a good research question in social work should contain?
Every research question must be: Relevant Researchable Feasible Ethical pg. 35
(According to Dr. Krain) Efficiency:
How the same work can be done for less money. How can the job be done where we can get more results for the same money? e.g.The total costs of an adoptions program divided by the number of finalized adoptions achieved.
Dr. Krain Identified Purposes of Lit Reviews:
Identifies findings and how they were found Identifies gaps that may exist. States what has been done and how your research is going to contribute to it.
What are the problems of biased sharing of findings?
If an intervention works, it might be very tempting to share it among the practioners of your agency, but not ones from a competitive agency.
What are the ethical problems with controlled experiments? Is there a solution to these problems?
In controlled experiments, there is a group that gets treatment and one that doesn't. It is ethically problematic that one group doesn't get treatment that works.
What is "white culture" and how does it affect social work research?
In most research studies conducted in the U.S., the strategies, analytic techniques, and measurements used come from the "white culture." Evaluations that impose rules from the majority or dominant culture may be restricted by a number of factors, such as conceptual mismatches, language barriers, different values, and differences in the meaning and manifestation of emotions. For example the same behavior observed or not observed in people from different cultures can mean different things.
Informed consent:
Informed consent must be approved by the IRB (Institutional Review Board). It is the first thing that is looked for when looking for funding for research Purpose: to illuminate unethical research.
Beneficence
Is the research beneficial to the clients? maximizes benefits and minimizes harm to research participants. Pg.67
What is Krain's idea of what evidence-based practice is basically about and the reasons why it is important in SOWK practice?
It is important for three different reasons: 1. It allows for honest relationships with the client because there is evidence to prove that what is being done with the client, works with the client. 2. Third-party: Parity - insurance companies have to have parity, which means they have to cover mental and physical health equally, but in order for them to cover something, the treatment plan to be evidence based. 3. Gives the profession and practice legitimacy.
Target effectiveness
Many human service programs are "targeted," or more correctly referred to as "programs whose services have targets." 1.Certain categories of people are to be served and others are not to be served. Programs like meals-on-wheels programs are "targeted" to the elderly and the disabled. People who are under age 60 and fully functional are not to be served by these programs. 2.Some programs are geographically targeted. They are supposed to serve people in designated geographical areas (counties, townships, neighborhoods, etc.) and not serve people in areas beyond those boundaries or serve residents of areas beyond those boundaries, even should they "wander in." 3.The idea of target effectiveness is the percentage of service recipients who are served that are in the targeted categories or areas. If 9 % of those served by a meals-on-wheels program are hale and hearty people under the age of 60, that program is 91% target effective. If it should happen that a senior center in Pulaski County, funded to serve elderly in Pulaski County, finds that 12% of those it is serving live in Saline or other counties, then that program is 88% target effective.
5. The Research Method
Most reliable source of Knowledge. Pgs.: 4-11
Is informed consent necessary in naturalistic observation studies?
No, if the data to be obtained has been deemed vitally important and there is no other way to get it. Pg. 52
Expanded Systems Model
Outcomes: are indicated by some sort of changes in the client. Quality of the outputs yield good outcomes, Low quality outputs yield bad outcomes. The difference between the outcomes is the quality of the inputs.
What can an Institutional Review Board do?
Prevent harm from coming to people who are in our studies.
Research Reviews need to have:
Preview: Your understanding of the research, what's important , what's not. Overview: A rapid reading of things identified in the preview. End view: Well-intentioned deep reading of a small collection well selected articles.
Unit (Project) 731, Japanese Experimentation on Humans, Gen. Shiro Ishii, WW II
Prisoners of war were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia. Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Scientists performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were alive because it was feared that the decomposition process would affect the results. The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children, and infants. Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss. Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body. Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and amputated, while others had limbs frozen then thawed to study the effects of the resultant untreated gangrene and rotting. Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects.To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied. Prisoners were infested with fleas in order to acquire large quantities of disease-carrying fleas for the purposes of studying the viability of germ warfare[citation needed]. Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644, Unit 100 et cetera) were involved in research, development, and experimental deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both civilian and military) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes upon Chinese cities, coastal Ningbo in 1940, and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1941. This military aerial spraying killed thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics.
What does it require us to do?
Researchers are expected to be aware of and respect the differences amount people and to be mindful of the implications of cultural differences on the research or evaluation processes.
What are the general steps of the research process according to the textbook?
State a hypothesis, collect data, revise hypothesis.
4. Intuition
Strength: Weakness: It is sometimes confused with professional judgement.
1. Authority
Strength: Experts that have gone before can provide experience and knowledge that is useful. Weakness: Experts can be wrong, and the consequences can be disasterous.
3. Experience
Strength: It gives you knowledge about approaches that work well and can benefit clients. Weakness: It can blind you to issues or experiences of someone else.
2. Tradition
Strength: The conformity it brings is useful, as our society could not function if each custom and belief was reexamined by each individual in every generation. Weakness: Unquestioning acceptance of "traditional dictates" easily leads to stagnation and to the perpetuation of wrongs.
Explanatory definition and goals:
Studies that ask very specific and more complex research questions - causality questions. Pg. 27 Determine the accuracy of a principle or theory. Find out which competing explanation is better. Link different issues or topics under a common general statement. Build and elaborate a theory so it becomes more complete. Extend a theory or principle into new areas or issues. Provide evidence to support or refute an explanation. Pg.32
Exploratory Definition and Goals
Studies, which are conducted for the purpose of exploration. They fall at the bottom of the knowledge-level continuum. Pg. 27 Goals: •Become familiar with the basic facts, people, and concerns involved. •Develop a well-grounded mental picture of what is occurring. •Generate many ideas and develop tentative theories and conjectures. •Determine the feasibility of doing additional research. •Formulate questions and refine issues for more systematic inquiry. •Develop techniques and a sense of direction for future research. Pg. 31
Descriptive definition and goals:
Studies, which describe a specific aspect of the topic area in greater detail, using words (qualitative) and/or numbers (quantitative). They fall in the middle of the knowledge-level continuum. •Provide an accurate profile of a group. •Describe a process, mechanism, or relationship. •Give a verbal or numerical picture (e.g. Percentages). •Find information to stimulate new explanations. •Create a set of categories or classify types. •Clarify a sequence, set of stages, or steps. •Document information that confirms or contradicts prior beliefs about a subject. Pg. 31
Research Review Must:
Talk about the measurements that are used. Identify the arguments of the literature and then give your opinion on it. Use articles that only pertain to your specific kind of research.
Which of them is the strongest basis for evidence-based practice?
The Research Method
What is the theoretical framework?
The basis of your research problem.
Performance
The idea of effectiveness or efficiency of the program
What would happen if research you do were not "culturally informed?"
The likelihood for misunderstanding would be even greater.
Quality
The number of proportion of outputs that meet a quality standard.
Effectiveness
The ratio of outcomes to inputs.
Efficiency
The ratio of outputs to inputs.
What is an independent variable
The thing that changes and The thing doing the acting punch in the jaw Independent variable: punch
What is a dependent variable?
The thing that does the changing. Per Dr. Krain: The thing being acted on, or being effected by this action punch in the jaw dependent variable: Jaw
Process
The way (means by which inputs are converted to outputs) the organization produces its output.
Inputs
There are two main forms of inputs into the human service program: Funding (Money): Money enables the program to hire the people and acquire the facilities and equipment to do the work it is supposed to do. The main questions are whether the program has enough money to do the work it is supposed to do, and whether it uses the money it does have to acquire the right people and the right stuff to get that work done. Clients: like students are inputs into schools, clients are inputs into human service programs. Clients that bring more problems, more serious problems, and more complex problems for human service programs to solve represent greater challenges for such programs to deal with. The main questions are whether and how client characteristics make the work the program has to do more costly, and affect the ability of the program to be successful in doing its work.
Willow Brook Scandal:
Throughout the first decade of its operation, outbreaks of hepatitis, primarily hepatitis A were common at the school. This led to a controversial medical study carried out there between the mid-1950s up to the 1970s by medical researchers Saul Krugman and Robert W. McCollum, who monitored to gauge the effects of gamma globulin in combating it. A public outcry forced the study to be discontinued. Shortly thereafter, in early 1972, Geraldo Rivera, then an investigative reporter for WABC-TV in New York, conducted a series of investigations at Willowbrook uncovering a host of deplorable conditions, including overcrowding, inadequate sanitary facilities, and physicaand sexual abuse of residents by members of the school's staff. The exposé, entitled Willowbrook: The Last Disgrace, garnered national attention and won a Peabody Award for Rivera.[6] Rivera later appeared on the nationally televised Dick Cavett Show with film of patients at the school.
What rights do research participants have that must be stated in the informed consent statement?
To withdraw from evaluation or research at any time without penalty. Pg. 3, Chap
Where and how do you search for information for the literature review?
Where: College library (indexes, abstracts, databases, interlibrary loans) University computers (internet) How: Establish the credibility of the source (Is it in an academically acknowleged database? Are the entries still relevant? It is current?)
Who is, and who is not, qualified to give informed consent to participate in a research study?
Who is: A person who is fully capable of understanding what is going to happen in the course of the study, why it is going to happen, and what its effect will be on them. Pg. 51 Who is not: Any person who is psychiatrically challenged, mentally delayed, or in any other way incapable of full understanding. Adolescents. Pg. 51 and 53
Stanford Prison Experiment, Phillip G. Zimbardo, 1971
a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted at Stanford University from August 14 to August 20 of 1971 by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. Twenty-four male students out of 75 were selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo's expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue. Two of the prisoners quit the experiment early and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. Certain portions of the experiment were filmed and excerpts of footage are publicly available.
Ethical concerns with regard to the ways in which research findings may be misused in social service programs:
a. Justifying decisions that were already made. b. Protecting public relations by avoiding negative publicity. c. Using scientific research findings to appraise performance of staff. d. Using evaluation research solely to fulfill funding requirements. e. Publishing only findings that confirm what the researchers wish to show.
Per Dr. Krain: If here is any question in connection with any of the above factors, regard that person as incapable of giving informed consent. When a person is incapable of giving informed consent, before including that person in a research study researchers should...
a. provide an appropriate explanation to that participant. b. obtain that participant's assent to the extent they are able. c. obtain written consent from an appropriate proxy.
Per Dr. Krain: IRBs...
a. review ethical aspects of research proposals that involve human participants. b. must approve research proposals before they can be funded. c. can be consulted on how to design ethical research studies.
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, US Public health Service, 1932 - 72
an infamous clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in poor, rural black men who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government.
Outputs:
anything a system produces (e.g. the number of clients who were counseled in a given time period. Another important output might be the number of hours of counseling that were delivered in this time period.)
Inputs:
anything in the system used to accomplish its purposes; resources or raw materials (e.g. funding, staff, facilities, equipment, clients, presenting problems etc.)
Outcomes
are measures of the amount of (hopefully positive) change in client status that the program has brought about. "Results" in a single word. The key questions are: Are the clients "better" since getting the outputs delivered to them? Or, are the clients that are getting the services "better off" than those not getting them? Whatever is delivered by a program, can we show that the clients are benefitting.
Outcomes:
are the results, accomplishments, or impacts achieved. (e.g. positive client change)
Obedience to Authority Study, Stanley Milgram, Yale University, 1961
conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. The "teacher" was given an electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment. The "teacher" was then given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the learner. The teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. The learner would press a button to indicate his response. If the answer was incorrect, the teacher would administer a shock to the learner, with the voltage increasing in 15-volt increments for each wrong answer. The subjects believed that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. After a number of voltage level increases, the actor started tobang on the wall that separated him from the subject. After several times banging on the wall and complaining about his heart condition, all responses by the learner would cease.
Performance measurement
deals with the "how-to."
Nonverbal Communication:
eye contact, facial expressions, time, use of space, and gestures convey much information and are deeply based in culture. Chap.4, Pg. 83
(According to Dr. Krain) Effectiveness
is the job getting done without regard to the cost. e.g. The total costs of a foster care program divided by the number of foster care days of service
What does effectiveness emphasize?
outcomes
What does efficiency emphasize?
outputs
Performance Accountability
provides the theoretical framework.
What does being culturally competent mean?
refers to an ability to interact effectively with people of different cultures, particularly in the context of... government [human service] agencies whose employees work with persons from different cultural/ethnic backgrounds.
Process
the work the program does to do what it is supposed to do. a. In many human service programs the program delivers counseling or therapy to solve client problems. The process question is about whether the right or best counseling or therapeutic techniques are being used. Are the counselors/therapists using these techniques correctly? Can they be trained to be more successful? Are there better techniques available that could (should) be adopted? b. In a meals-on-wheels program, process questions would focus on the preparation and delivery of the meals, the skills and competencies of the cooks, the quality of the packaging of the meals to be delivered, the skills of the meal deliverers, the skills of the raw food purchasers, etc.
What is the relationship between diversity and cultural competency?
they are associated from a communication perspective, a diverse culture. Diversity must be prevalent and valued before one may be considered culturally competent... The term diversity has evolved to include concepts focusing on [agency] culture and the intersections of power, structure, and communication all of which may contribute to diversity initiatives or potentially impede them. Diversity initiatives are typically part of an... approach, which not only seeks [diverse stakeholder] input but also values it; differences are recognized as a uniting component rather than a separating one. Since diversity is an ambiguous term grounded in context, it does not necessarily mean the same thing to all the people all the time. Diversity encourages the process of including the perspectives of under-represented, non-dominant groups in organizations to ensure they have a voice; however, the dominant group must also be part of the diversity initiative or an "us versus them" mentality becomes entrenched in the [agency] impeding the effectiveness of any diversity initiative, thereby delegitimizing it.
Nazi Experimentation on Humans, Dr. Josef Mengele, WW II
used Auschwitz as an opportunity to continue his research on heredity, using inmates for human experimentation. He was particularly interested in identical twins; The subjects of Mengele's research were better fed and housed than ordinary prisoners and were, for the time being, safe from the gas chambers, although many experiments resulted in more painful deaths.
Purposes of a Literature Review:
•To help you identify a suitable topic for study. •To help you identify relevant literature for your study. •To help you get an idea of what the main debates are on your topic area. •To help you understand the issues involved. •To help inform your own ideas about your research problem area. •To gain familiarity with the accepted research approaches and methods in our profession. •To become critical co-conversant in the "academic conversation." Pg. 37
