Ashford HHS460 Week 2 Discussion (dq1+dq2)

Ashford HHS460 Week 2 Discussion 

Dq1

Locating Resources. The ability to locate and utilize information relative to Health and Human Services is an important component of many health and human service jobs. Some of the areas included in HHS programs are: 

? Legal/illegal immigration ? Poverty
? Violence in the Media
? Unemployment 

? Alcoholism
? Gambling
? Sexual Harassment
? Criminal Justice
? Hunger / Homelessness ? Mental Illness
? Health 

As an example, the area of “poverty” was selected from the above list to locate information and relevant reports. To accomplish this, the following was entered into a search engine (such as Google or MSN): “Health and human services and programs dealing with poverty.” One of the 1, 490,000 “hits” was titled: “Poverty Guidelines, Research and Measurement.” Upon searching this website, an elaborate set of focus subtitles was found. Under the heading “Poverty Research Centers”, six more references were discovered and as the interest was focused on discovering what information was available, the search centered on “The National Poverty Center.” An examination on this site under that heading yielded numerous areas regarding new research opportunities, informing the policy community, and training for young researchers. Your specific assignment follows. Start with an exploration of what can be found in several of the areas listed above. Then, identify one area and prepare a descriptive post outlining the information in this site. You may want to experiment with various areas in order 

to understand the unusually large number of resources / programs, but also the kinds of information. Respond to at least two of your classmates’ postings.

Dq2

Research Venues. Research can be divided into three broad areas: descriptive, qualitative, and quantitative. Some researchers subsume descriptive research (archival) as quantitative. However, for this discussion, we are considering it a separate kind, as descriptive research can fall into either area: qualitative or quantitative. Your assignment for this discussion is to prepare a 250-300 word post differentiating qualitative, quantitative, and analysis of availability data. Identify those attributes that form the essence of these three research venues. Respond to at least two of your classmates’ postings. 

Questions that might be considered: 

• ?  What are the differences in types of data / information among the three venues? 

• ?  What are the expected outcomes when using each kind? For example, does using available data enable 

  one to determine cause and effect? 

• ?  Which venue utilizes narrative and observation as a data source? 

• ?  What are some advantages / disadvantages for each research venue?