PLS 595 JOURNAL ENTRY 7

Data collection was supposed to begin this week. Various complications and delays have prevented recruitment of participants since one month ago when I delivered the first version of the surveys to the Center. Last week all stops were pulled out by Kevin and the staff. However, according to Aly, no willing candidates met the qualifications: a child victim of abuse or neglect who is a resident or former resident of New Hanover county where the crime took place.

I fully expect that trend will not hold and that interviews will likely take place starting next week. Hopefully, Dr. Imperial's dire prediction of data collection difficulty will prove to be pessimistic. Meanwhile, my conversations with Kevin and his staff have led me to make a few changes. I have come to realize that the original pdf versions of the surveys were simply inadequate, even after we edited them. First, they lack all but the most basic questions about demographics--some have none at all. Without a few basic demographic details, it will be difficult to assess the center's performance with respect to the particular needs of its clients.

This observation, though late in the game, led me to request that case numbers be handwritten on all surveys in their current pdf forms which were taken straight from the evaluation manual. I also requested that the surveys for each case be attached together. Then, as I enter the data, I will also enter the following details: age of victim, income range, primary ethnicity(ies), zip code, and, possibly, a code that indicates the primary type of abuse or neglect. Other case details are also recommended. I must sort through the possibilities to come up with the best combination of specifics for each of the instruments. Though this type of data endangers the anonymity of the responses, I feel that it is necessary in order to increase opportunities for meaningful statistical analyses and, consequently, improve the usefulness of the results. Moreover, the case numbers are meaningless to anyone (such as myself) without access to the Center's protected database.

Second, in order to transition the evaluation over to Center staff and volunteers in December, I feel it is imperative to give them the forms in an editable format, such as MS Word or MS InfoPath. That will tend to ensure that the practice of program monitoring will not become irrelevant and die out through disuse. The Carousel Center is by no means a static program design. Growth and change are inevitable and this evaluation will need to evolve right along with it.

Right now, the project is one month out from data analysis. A number of loose ends remain and this rewrite is now one of them. I plan to spend the next week working on the new and improved instruments and building the corresponding databases in SPSS. I already have the child victim database designed. I intend to build the other three this week. The following week, I would like to meet with Kevin and Aly to discuss data analysis and decide what it is that they would like to know specifically regarding the Center's performance. I will lay out for them at that time what kinds of information I expect to be able to extract based on the data. Furthermore, we need to discuss the implementation and collection of the multidisciplilnary team surveys. Ideally, those should be completed no later than mid-November.