Hi everyone,
Last year when I did "The Parenting Experience Survey," several of you suggested that I do a retrospective study of late adolescents and young adults. I have not forgotten this idea--and did a good deal of reading on the methodological problems of retrospectives. Then two students wanted to do the Due Process study first--and I got them a small grant.....the Due Process study isn't going well for lack of response but I keep hoping --and we are exploring other avenues to try to reach 5-7 more people (if you know anyone who has been to Due Process--send them on over please). This is a qualitative study (by telephone interview) so only ar9ound ten people are needed for it to be creditable.
As you can see, research goes VERY slowly. Everything takes twice or three times as long. Soooooo...I'm wondering if you all would REALLY support a retrospective study? There were 23 people who had gone to Due Process--we have 3 and one more scheduled. That is less than a 25% subsample-and 6 short of the minimum we need.
If I were to try to do a retrospective, it would not work unless PE and Teens & SA responded at lot higher rate. In the original study, there were about 106 respondent with difficult children over 17. I would need about a 60 60 70% response rate for this to work because retrospectives are quantitative not qualitative. Here's why:
The purpose of a retrospective is to try to figure out (after the fact) what worked and what did not. This type of study is very difficult to pull of with parents of EBD kids because by the time the kids are as old as ours, the parents are --who knows where? Further, as you know if you read the summary of the findings of the first study, parents of EBD children are viewed as a big part of the problem in the literature rather than a big part of the solution as parents here are.
So CD.com parents are a unique source of information because as a group they have done SO MANY THINGS to try to help, there is a good chance that we could figure out, on average, what helped and what didn't.
If I were to do the retrospective, it would be another on-line survey (much shorter than the first one) that would ask for more detailed information about what services you obtained, in school and outside, to try to help your child. Again, it would be totally anonymous and no identifying information would be sought. The only qualification would be having a difficult child over 17 (or maybe 16 if out of school) whose "outcome" and age are known at the present time. That qualifies every parent here.
I really hope this could work--there are no retrospective of EBD adults who are spread out all the way along the "success" and "residual problems" continuum as is the case with our kids. It is worth doing in my opinion--but I love research but know it is not everyone's passion.
So how about it? Do enough of you still want to do it? It is a TON of work to get permission from the institutional review board (IRB) to conduct a study and lot more to write the survey. Since the Due Process study is floundering, I told the research team I would post to you guys to try to see how you feel so we can decide where to direct our efforts.
Thanks for reading this.
Martie
Last year when I did "The Parenting Experience Survey," several of you suggested that I do a retrospective study of late adolescents and young adults. I have not forgotten this idea--and did a good deal of reading on the methodological problems of retrospectives. Then two students wanted to do the Due Process study first--and I got them a small grant.....the Due Process study isn't going well for lack of response but I keep hoping --and we are exploring other avenues to try to reach 5-7 more people (if you know anyone who has been to Due Process--send them on over please). This is a qualitative study (by telephone interview) so only ar9ound ten people are needed for it to be creditable.
As you can see, research goes VERY slowly. Everything takes twice or three times as long. Soooooo...I'm wondering if you all would REALLY support a retrospective study? There were 23 people who had gone to Due Process--we have 3 and one more scheduled. That is less than a 25% subsample-and 6 short of the minimum we need.
If I were to try to do a retrospective, it would not work unless PE and Teens & SA responded at lot higher rate. In the original study, there were about 106 respondent with difficult children over 17. I would need about a 60 60 70% response rate for this to work because retrospectives are quantitative not qualitative. Here's why:
The purpose of a retrospective is to try to figure out (after the fact) what worked and what did not. This type of study is very difficult to pull of with parents of EBD kids because by the time the kids are as old as ours, the parents are --who knows where? Further, as you know if you read the summary of the findings of the first study, parents of EBD children are viewed as a big part of the problem in the literature rather than a big part of the solution as parents here are.
So CD.com parents are a unique source of information because as a group they have done SO MANY THINGS to try to help, there is a good chance that we could figure out, on average, what helped and what didn't.
If I were to do the retrospective, it would be another on-line survey (much shorter than the first one) that would ask for more detailed information about what services you obtained, in school and outside, to try to help your child. Again, it would be totally anonymous and no identifying information would be sought. The only qualification would be having a difficult child over 17 (or maybe 16 if out of school) whose "outcome" and age are known at the present time. That qualifies every parent here.
I really hope this could work--there are no retrospective of EBD adults who are spread out all the way along the "success" and "residual problems" continuum as is the case with our kids. It is worth doing in my opinion--but I love research but know it is not everyone's passion.
So how about it? Do enough of you still want to do it? It is a TON of work to get permission from the institutional review board (IRB) to conduct a study and lot more to write the survey. Since the Due Process study is floundering, I told the research team I would post to you guys to try to see how you feel so we can decide where to direct our efforts.
Thanks for reading this.
Martie
