Continuing!

It truly is hard to believe how time has passed.  It seems like yesterday that I started on this journey and now I'm a year into my doctorate!  This course has been the most harrowing to date, but we've all learned so much and basically a 1/3 of our paper is nearly finished!  That takes a bit of the pressure off and adds to the excitement of pursuing what we are all asking in our questions!  I wish everyone a challenging but great experience in the semesters to come and hope to see all of you at summer conference!  I plan to try to continue this blog until graduation to map the process for real!  Take care all of you! ~H.

Dissertation Blog #4

Based on the information learned in class, I feel that my dissertation will be quantitative in nature.  The design I believe will fall under Survey Research.  Survey Research looks at perceptions, attitudes and opinions of participants in a study and have research questions that are descriptive, comparing or relationship based.  My research questions are comparative between two Intermediate Units and the types of pre-evaluation interventions they use as well as how effective they are rated to be.  My data collection will be by questionaire/survey.  I've looked at different surveys used in the literature and really feel that parts of surveys from Elksnin & Capilouto (1994) and Beck & Dennis (1997) will fit what I am looking for in my dissertation.

Correction to previous blog- updated!

This is a revision to the previous blog.

Research Question and Variables

Here Is one of my research questions and the independent/dependent variables.

Update!

I received an e-mail that a group is definitely forming to discuss RTI and caseloads/service delivery!  This is exciting because it will give me more information that I can use to help develop my dissertation!  I'm looking forward to it!

Searching!

I'm beginning to search for surveys that have information that I think that I could use in my own survey for my research problem.  It's really interesting to see what kind of surveys are out there and how the authors used the information in those surveys to back up their hypotheses in their research!   This is getting cool!

Purpose of study and Research Questions

Here are my purpose of study and research questions based on the variables collected.  Feedback is appreciated!  ~H.H.

PURPOSE OF STUDY

The purpose of the study is to determine the interventions and service delivery methods used in the western sector of southeastern Pennsylvania Intermediate Unit to reduce SLP caseload numbers and their effectiveness in treating communication disorders in the least restrictive environment possible and to compare them to the eastern sector southeastern Pennsylvania Intermediate Unit.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

What are the best pre-evaluation interventions used by the SLPs in the western sector of southeastern Pennsylvania Intermediate Units to reduce labeling children with communication disorders?

What are the best pre-evaluation interventions used by SLPs in the eastern sector of southeastern Pennsylvania Intermediate Units to reduce labeling children with communication disorders?

How do western sector southeastern Pennsylvania SLPs pre-evaluation interventions relate to eastern sector southeastern Pennsylvania SLPs pre-evaluation interventions?

How do western sector SLPs compare to eastern sector SLPs regarding the effectiveness of the pre-evaluation interventions they are providing to reduce labeling children with communication disorders?