Author: EricaReneeH

Whew! It’s been a lonnnng research journey! When I first registered for this class, I wondered why I would need a research class to be a good Social Worker. Even purchasing the textbooks and seeing a statistics workbook had me thinking that maybe my advisor got it wrong!  Throughout a good portion of the class I was looking for the connection and it wasn’t until it was time to write the final research proposal that it all became clear.

               I remember writing in previous blogs where I mentioned how I was apprehensive about the information overload and managing my time to not overwhelm myself closer to the due date. It’s safe to say that unfortunately,  THAT plan didn’t work.  I found myself pulling all -nighters, being stressed and having brain fog throughout this proposal process, (I feel like the final proposal snuck up on me, 😥) but life happens, and you just gotta push through!!

               Reading the textbooks, listening to lectures were, okay, but I feel like when I was able to apply what I learned to the final proposal paper really drove the lessons home.  I had a lot of “ah ha” moments while writing the final proposal and got excited from understanding the full research process. I do think it would be cool to work under an actual researcher to make sure that what I think I know is valid.

               The goal for actually going into the social work field was to be able to facilitate a curriculum that I created to different mental health organizations, prison groups and colleges, and this course has taught me how to go about doing that successfully. When I facilitated my curriculum to a group of high school boys, I had them complete a pre and post assessment to gage the effectiveness of my program, not knowing that that’s an actual part of conducting research! I appreciate the group work with finding ethical consent forms, formulating research questions and I even ENJOYED completing the statistics worksheets!  Although, I will admit that I need more practice with the Jamovi website 😬

All in all, I got more out of this class than I initially thought I would.

Cheers to Research!

Hey! Long time no see, BUT, I’m back and I’ve got a story to tell!  While I was working at this God-awful job during the Covid 19 outbreak, I was chatting with a co-worker who shared with me that he was considering taking a trial vaccine in exchange for financial compensation.  I got super nervous for him and started explaining how it was dangerous for him to be a part of the trial and making the correlation to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.  Thankfully I was convincing enough, and he decided to forgo the experiment!

When it comes to conducting research, the world doesn’t have a clean record on its ethical practices. And while there are many instances of horrific experiments done on human subjects, the one that sticks out most to me is the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. In 1932, The U.S. Public Health Service began a study to record the natural history of Syphilis (a quick history lesson, if you will) where 600 Black men (some with Syphilis, some without) were told they were being treated for several ailments and in return they’d receive free medical exams, free meals, and burial insurance. In 1972 the study was considered “ethically unjustified” by an Ad Hoc Advisory Panel and was ended (www.cdc.gov). During the 40 years that this study took place, no consent was collected from the participants, and they were never actually treated for syphilis even though a cure, penicillin, was available.

Many times, these botched experiments are conducted on the poor, uneducated and minority groups because those groups of people have always been considered disposable in the eyes of the ruling class (whew, this is getting a lot deeper than I intended it to get!).  The anti- racist and anti-oppressive lens in research affect how we implement ethical research because they take into account the voices and rights of marginalized communities. They help researchers to understand what to investigate, how to investigate and how to interpret the findings. It also allows researchers to gather an appropriate amount of minority participants for a study to ensure they are adequately represented. Additionally, eliminating cultural bias and insensitivity can improve the methods used in a study this improving its validity. 

In the case of the Tuskegee Experiments, many ethical guidelines were not met, for one, informed consent was not asked for, therefore it couldn’t be given, the participants were deceived, as they were given placebo pills thinking that they were medicine, and they underwent psychological and physical harm as the men passed away but not before spreading the disease to their wives and children.

Adopting an anti-racist and anti-oppressive lens in research alters how social workers approach and implement ethical research practices and makes the respondents more willing to be active and honest participants. The anti-racist, anti-oppressive lens is fundamental to upholding the Social Work core values of integrity and competence. 

Cheers to being culturally competent researchers and defending the dignity and worth of the human person!

Hey, so…I don’t know if this sounds harsh or not, but I don’t want to hold someone’s hand throughout the tribulations of their life (yikes, that sounds bad written out😱). I want to provide them with the tools needed so they can eventually help themselves. Don’t get me wrong! I love to help and give advice and solutions to my friends and family problems, but I get frustrated when they have the same problems EVEN AFTER I have talked them off the ledge NUMEROUS of times! This might sound cruel for a potential Social Worker, but my approach is “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime”.

 You might be wondering, “Erica what does ANY of this have to do with the role science plays in social work?” I’m getting to it! Science gives us evidence of the effectiveness of treatment options.  It provides us with solutions to truly help people and promote self-actualization. Science helps to explain and discover patterns in society of various demographics.  Science allows Social Workers to use research-based knowledge to better understand their clients and essentially provide effective treatment. On an even bigger scale, Social Workers can use the results from scientific research to help in the policy- making process. With qualitative and quantitative data, policy makers should be more likely to implement suggestions made by informed Social Workers.

For any successful relationship, compatibility plays a significant role in the harmony of the connection. Social work depends on science to promote individual and social change. Science is as vital to social work as vultures are to maintaining the wellbeing of our ecosystem (hmm, maybe I could’ve found a better analogy, 🤔 “vulture” has such a negative connotation…but you get my drift! It’s a mutually beneficial relationship!)  Social work provides the variables, hypothesis, and methodologies while science carries out the research and provides the results.

Literature reviews allow Social Workers and other health professionals to work smarter and not harder.  If we can refer to research that has already been conducted, we can have proof of what worked, what improvements can be made, what flopped and see how to manipulate variables to produce a more favorable outcome.  It also allows us to not do double work, if we see that a study has been conducted on a specific issue already, we can find another angle to tackle or make adjustments to the variables used or the procedure implemented.

In order to help men feed themselves for a lifetime, Social Workers have the responsibility to provide informed solutions to their issues and tools that they can use to maintain their progress.  Science allows social workers to adapt to the changing needs of their clients, present new ideas to implement to support their clients, and help to analyze the motivation behind their clients’ actions and behaviors.

(this sounds so cliché 😂 but…)

Cheers to the role Science plays in helping to create a better world for mankind!

Usually when someone asks me about my ability to do something, my first thought is the infamous Bible verse, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. 😊 However! My next thoughts are usually, how long will it take? Exactly how hard will this task be? Will I hurt myself in the process (I’m super clumsy and accident prone 🤕), and is this REALLY necessary for me to do?

I think that image is SO fitting to how I feel because I KNOW I am capable of doing any AND  everything, it’s just the process that I will have to go through is unfamiliar which can potentially cause MAJOR frustration and emotional damage (the dramatics are nonstop! 😂)

In the case of this Literature Review Paper, I think it will take a considerate amount of time, it WILL be challenging, it shouldn’t be too painful (unless we factor in mental stress 😕) and it is absolutely necessary for me to complete for me to even begin the research process (the WHOLE purpose of the class!).

Basically, there’s no getting out of writing the review, but luckily for me, I EXCELLED (“excelled” might be an exaggeration) at writing essays and research papers in high school and undergrad (I even won some writing awards). But, graduate school literature review papers might be a bit more intense.

To be successful at anything, one must always highlight their strengths to give them a confidence boost! With that being said, I feel like I utilize the thesaurus well (I actually REALLY enjoy using the thesaurus 🤓), my comprehension skills are well developed, and I can effectively summarize my findings and add insightful thoughts.

On the other hand 😬, to be successful at anything, one must always acknowledge areas of weakness to know when and where to seek help. I will admit that I do struggle with grammatical errors! It’s not uncommon to find run on sentences and misplaced commas. I usually read my work aloud to make sure I haven’t missed a word and that it flows.  I also have my sister read my papers (she’s a published author and proud grammar police) to ensure that it’s understandable to someone outside of my field of study. 

A quote that  stuck out to me from Machi and McEvoy that I will keep in the back of my mind throughout the remainder of my academic career is, “Some people do not have the patience and foresight to do it right the first time but have infinite patience and capacity to do it over and over and over again”. I think it’s important to take the time to be as precise and efficient as possible for the first draft of the Lit Review so I can get good feedback from my peers. 

Reflecting on my reservations around how hard this task will be, if I follow the 6 step process outlined in Machi and McEvoy along with the other resources available to me, I believe I will be able to complete this task with flying colors!

Cheers to a lit Lit Review! (no typo! 😁)

When I hear the word “research” I think about my Omega Cold Press Slow Masticating Juicer 😊. Random, I know! But I was in the market for a juicer and wanted the best one a moderate budget could afford. I conducted several Google, Facebook, and Instagram searches, watched a TON of YouTube videos and read countless reviews on a number of juicers from a number of juicing experts. After about 2 weeks and too many hours to count, I decided on the Omega. When it comes to “big” purchases, I make sure to do my due diligence to ensure I’m getting the best bang for my buck, HOWEVER, when I think about “research” for the greater good of mankind (dramatic much?!) it becomes a daunting task that I try to avoid at all costs!! I’m not opposed to gaining knowledge, I’m more so anxious about  information overload and organizing my findings. In addition to the data explosion, I am apprehensive about my ability to choose the correct sources, narrowing my topic down and having enough time to conduct efficient and thorough research.

To help me with this overwhelming feat, I researched HOW to research😊and found some helpful tips! Among the basics that I already know about, Google suggested that I “do a preliminary search for information”, (I suppose to make sure my topic is satisfactory), “locate materials” (I know I can use Dominicans extensive library resources for this part), “evaluate your sources” (how, though?! ☹), “make notes” (definitely going to do a annotated bibliography) and finally “write your paper”…seems easy enough…

One thing Google didn’t mention is getting feedback, constructive criticism and the opinion of my colleagues and professor.  I think that will be the most integral part of conducting a research assignment because it is always helpful having likeminded individuals to make me aware of some things I might have missed or not even considered. 

So, how will I tackle this research task you ask… I have a game plan!

First, I will dedicate at minimum an hour a day to this project to ensure I don’t fall behind and have a  ton of work to do at the last minute! <- TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS IN ACTION!

Next, I plan on creating a bookmark folder on my browser where I will keep all potential articles/ resources that I find and go through at a later time to check for relevance.

Then, I think it will be beneficial to be able to use what I’ve learned in previous classes to help with my research project, in particular, the annotated bibliography.  While I feel it is extremely tedious to complete, it was CLUTCH when it came time for me to pull my paper together.  It was a true testament to the idea that “doing the hard things first, makes it easier to do other things” (or something like that!). The annotated bibliography allowed me to organize my findings, weed out the articles that were not beneficial to my topic and highlight the most important parts.

Finally, after writing the paper, I will have a friend read through my work to ensure it’s comprehensible, and that there are no grammatical errors.

With this plan of action, I’m already feeling more confident, and “research” doesn’t sound so scary anymore.

Cheers to this research journey!