Thursday, April 16, 2009
Clarifying your topic, question and sources for your qualitative literature review
Please describe the topic you are focusing on for this current assignment and post the question that is guiding your research thus far. Also, tell us about the source you found for today and cut and paste the summary you wrote for today's class into this response.
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Research Topic: The relationship between homelessness and drug abuse
ReplyDeleteQuestion to Explore: Why do homeless people use drugs? And why is it more common to use drugs in the homeless community?
Source: The epidemiology of alcohol, drug, and mental disorders among homeless persons. By: Fischer, Pamela J., Breakey, William R., American Psychologist, 0003-066X, 1991, Vol. 46, Issue 11
The source that I have found gives me an insight to the current condition of homeless people and drug abuse. It gives me a comparison between drug use behavior and the average American and drug use behavior and homeless individuals. In order to gain the majority of their information, they used interview techniques with homeless individuals. They sampled homeless men and women who were 18 years or older and displayed accurate randomizaion. In the study they show the relationship between the drug use average in America and the drug use average in homeless people, and they compare it to different age categories. I believe that this article is a good base for my investigation because it gives me background information that will be helpful to understand as I further my investigation. I found this article to be extremely relevant to my topic.
After contemplating my focus for this next assignment, I decided that I wanted to focus on motivation to volunteer – in particular, what makes a person volunteer their time to help the homeless improve their circumstance? I wanted to look at the reward people receive for their work – not a tangible, monetary reward, but something more internal. In a society where we are mainly about self-promotion, why do people stop to help others they cannot relate to? My hypothesis thus far is that when people volunteer, they get a sense of pride from their work and feel good about making someone else feel better. The first study that I found was in an article called “When Good Overcomes Bad: The Impact of Volunteers On Those They Help.” The article was a qualitative study that analyzed how people feel about participating in something that others have deemed as “perceived goodness.” The first question to ask is what is it about a person that causes other people to perceive them as good or altruistic? The study was a participatory observation, and examined volunteers’ first encounters with volunteer work. The results looked at the impact these volunteers had on the people they were working with, as well as how the work made the volunteers feel in the end. Are you happy with the work you’ve done, how did you feel, how do you perceive altruism? I’m not finished with this article yet, but thus far, I’ve found it very helpful and appropriate for the topic I’m hoping to use for my paper.
ReplyDeleteI am thinking about writing about the self image of the homeless. The source I found today is called "The Self Concept of Homeless Adolescents" and it is published in a periodical called The Journal of Youth and Adolescence. The article is a collection of statistics from studies on 30 adolescents who were homeless. They used surveys to develop theories about how delinquency and homelessness effect the self-image of homeless youth and then comparing these findings with findings of 120 youth who live at a home.
ReplyDeleteI am interested in researching what the effect of homelessness is upon substance, meaning alcohol and drug abuse, on different people. For example does substance abuse effect youth or adults more if they are homeless, or are more youth or adults homeless because of substance abuse? Also is there a difference in the use between males and females?
ReplyDeleteThis study, entitled "Homelessness and Substance Abuse: which comes first?", is interested in answering the question of whether or not “problematic substance use precedes or follows homelessness”. It differentiates between the “social selection model” in which studies have found that drug and alcohol use are typically the leading factors for one being found homeless, and the “social adaptation model” which says that substance abuse is a consequence of homelessness. The study draws a sample of almost 5,000 participants, a very large group, and putting aside all the unique situations they found that more often substance abuse follows homelessness rather than precedes it. They give a definition of homelessness, using the cultural definition with primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of homelessness so that they can better formulate ideas in their study. They also assign a defintion of substance abuse since that is the other major factor in their study. Usually problematic substance-abuse was self-reported and only sometimes had to be assessed by the staff. They did 65 in-depth interviews for the qualitative research They did find that both approaches (social selection and adaptation) helped them to understand homelessness and its relation to substance abuse. For example, people who had substance abuse problems whether before or after homelessness, tended to stay homeless for longer periods of time. They also talked a bit about the youth and age issue which I had wanted to talk about in my paper as well.
I am researching what factors influence homeless families at shelters in concern to what they eat and why they eat it.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: What factors influence what different members of a family unit eat at a homeless shelter?
Summary: The study, Environmental, parental, and personal influences on food choice, access, and overweight status among homeless children, conducted by Rickelle Richards and Chery Smith, uses interviews to gain insight into what children at homeless shelters eat and why they eat it. The researchers interviewed fifty six children, ages six to thirteen years old, in person. All fifty six children came from one of two homeless shelters in the Minnesota area. These interviews were audio-recorded, then written down, and finally analyzed by two separate researchers.
After analyzing independently, the researchers compiled their results. They found that a child’s environment, parents, and personal factors influenced the type of food they could obtain and the food they consumed. When looking at the information shared about environment, researchers noticed that the atmosphere inside the homeless shelter and outside the homeless shelter affected homeless children’s food choice. Internally, factors such as the time of meals, shelter rules about what food may be kept in rooms, the quality of food located at the shelters, influenced what the children ate. Fast food restaurants and convenience stores in the surrounding area of the two homeless shelters were external factors affecting what the children ate and why they ate it. This study found that the children and their families were limited to food locations within walking distance of their shelter. Examining what the children had said about their parents and food, the researchers found that as a whole, overweight children in homeless shelters are given mixed messages from their parents. Some parents urge their kids to overeat at meals to reduce the likelihood that they will feel hungry later, while other parents warn and scold their children against eating too much and getting fat. Food allergies and preferences concerning appearing, flavor, and texture of the meals found in homeless shelters also contributed to the choices children made to decide what they would eat. Overall the study found that almost half of these shelter children were overweight and that all the shelter children suffered from the restricted and inconsistent schedule they received food on.
There are two very distinct directions that I know I would enjoy in researching for this paper. To decide on which direction I will take I need to further research both topics to see what kind of qualitative literature is out there. First, I would like to develop a clearer perspective of Veterans and their experience with being homeless in direct relation to PTSD—and how they view their sacrifice as veterans in relation to the government. I would also be very interested in developing how homeless youth and the school districts view the Mckinley Act for homeless youth. The umbrella concept of both these ideas is the way one educates the homeless about their rights or more so how the homeless perceive their rights.
ReplyDeleteThe topic I am focusing on is inmate rehabilitation and why the majority fails at functioning outside of prison. The source I found was called Crime and Criminals by C. Debner and T. O'Neil and was written in 1984. The article focuses on poverty being a crime cause and whether prison truly works to reform these people. It also focuses on whether rehabilitation is really possible for these people, and why stricter policies and harsher sentences may not be the answer to the prison systems.
ReplyDeleteI am planning to write about what motivates people to involve themselves in volunteerism. Is it simply one’s altruistic personality? Are volunteers motivated by a desire to learn about people in different socio-economic statuses?
ReplyDeleteTitle: A study of volunteers in community-based restorative justice programs.
Author(s):Karen A. Souza and Mandeep K. Dhami.
Source: Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 50.1 (Jan 2008): p31(27). (8454 words)
Document Type: Magazine/Journal
Although this source focuses more on volunteering related to restorative justice, it still mentions six specific motives theorized by psychologists which cause people to volunteer. The specific motives include: values, understanding, career, social, protective, and enhancement. In addition, the psychologists discuss the motivations for continued involvement.
I still need help looking for sources which look more closely at volunteering related to homelessness and poverty issues.
Question: How could homeless shelter provide safe environment for transgender individuals?
ReplyDeleteAs we see majority of homeless shelters in Denver, most of shelters provide housing base by biological gender and ignore individual’s gender identities. This article focuses on transgender shelter and making safe shelters for transgender people. Definitions of different gender identities are incorporated in the article. Change of policies and safety are the main concern for transgender individuals to receive shelter services.
Research Question: How does homelessness affect families?
ReplyDeleteSource: Homelessness among At‐Risk Families with Children in Twenty American Cities (Fertig, Reingold)
Summary: This article looks at homeless families with children and uses data from a relevant study, the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study. They being with many basic facts such as numbers of homeless families, percentages of families with children etc. Characteristics of such families are brought out next, including what kind of shelter these families typically utilize. The article moved on to try to offer “explanations of homelessness”. The author looked at risk factors for families on individual, household, and city levels, exploring what might influence homelessness. The author uses the results of the study to come up with ideas that could potentially reduce family homelessness. The area greatest potential for reducing family homelessness lies in “interventions”. This would basically involve a higher power offering things that are designed to strengthen support among low‐income mothers (who are in the majority of homeless families), such as low‐income housing assistance. Since the study revealed that homelessness is only moderately connected to local housing and labor market conditions, it makes more sense to work on what is a more related factor “informal and institutional social support”.
I believe that this source will be a really good starting block, a good source to utilize in order to establish a factually based picture of a homeless family and how they came to this situation. As of right now it I am not looking into what will solve the problem, my focus is more about what the families are like in this state (perhaps how they got there).
Here is Briana's comment:
ReplyDeleteTopic: homelessness in rural communities
Question: What does being homeless in a rural community look like and how do people that become homeless deal with the weather, small job pool, and lack of free resources.
Source 1:
The study that I have chosen to use is a review the other literature and the results of 60 interviews conducted in rural New York. This study found that even though it is not common to see the stereotype of a homeless person in rural areas, homelessness does exist. However, the homelessness that exists in the rural areas involves moving often, living with other friends or relatives, or living in dilapidated structures. This is why it is so rare to see “homeless” people out in the country. The study also found that many of the homeless people where single parent families that had no local family support group to access. This study explains many of the social dynamics and processes that rural people who become homeless encounter, as well as how they take care of themselves and their family with such limited access to resources.
I will be writing about the connection between homelessness and mental illness and substance use, which can often exacerbate the manifestations of mental illness. The source that I have looked at is called"Coordination of Care for Homeless Individuals with Comorbid Severe Mental Disorders and Substance-Related Disorders." The study focuses on how psychiatric symptoms and substance use disorders are often diagnosed in homeless people who frequent sheters and programs. Services provided for these symptoms are often inadequate. This study analyzes the outcomes of “coordinated care” on 50 patients compared with 50 patients who received “standard methods” of care. The conclusion that was reached is that treatment for both substance use and mental illness can often be "low intensity" and more effective than only diagnosing a person in one of those categories.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: How does the “No Child Left Behind” legislation affect achievement in schools and teaching?
ReplyDeleteSource #1: Haifeng, Zhang. Cowen, Daivd.“Mapping Academic Achievement and Public School Choice Under the No Child Left Behind Legislation.” Southeastern Geographer. Spring2009, Vol. 49 Issue 1, p24-40.
Summary:
This article investigates factors associated with the academic achievement gap and explores the geographical inequalities (specifically of public school choice in South Carolina) in the context of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. For their quantitative research, they “hypothesized that a school’s NCLB status (failing vs. choice) is related to a number of factors including geographic locale, school attributes and neighborhood characteristics.” I think this will be an important article to use in my research paper because it highlights the aspects of the law that are unfair, such as the gap between choice and failing public schools, especially in rural areas, showing that some schools as a whole do get “left behind.”