Project Update - 4/3/2014

Today we finished deciding how we could introduce the topic of a job fair to the Writing Partnership students. We came up with a sort of flow chart of questions, then spoke about the best way to present them. During class,we were still at a point of a stand still because we did not have a response back from the Career Center. We decided to email the Career Center again with the same email that we sent the first time. Then, we scheduled a meeting online for the Career Center. Later on that day we got a reply from the Career Center saying that they are too busy to accommodate our request because they have more prominent concerns. Also, we were not able to talk to the Writing Partnership students about their opinions of working after high school.

As of now, the odds seem against our group in terms of completing this project before the end of the semester.

Institutional Review Board

1.  What experiments lead to the creation of the National Research Act?

Experiments that lead to the creation of the National Research Act were: the Tuskegee Syphilis Study as well as studies that occurred during the Nazi regime in Germany. The National Research Act moved to protect the rights of humans during their participation in scientific studies.

2. What are the three guiding principles of the Belmont Report?

• Respect for people
• Beneficence
• Justice

3. Good ethics begins with good medicine?  Do you agree and why?

I believe that all medicine has the potential to be both good an bad, the use of ethics determine how they are used. If used in moderation and for the specific purpose, you then have both good medicine and good ethics.You would have to have good ethics in order to create good medicine, but also you would have to have good medicine to be implemented with good ethics. 

4. Why do certain groups need additional protection?

Certain groups need additional protection because, for whatever reason specific to each individual group, the people in that cohort are not able to vocalize their concerns for heir rights. Maybe that group does not know that they are at risk of having specific rights infringed upon, or they are not taken seriously when they are expressing concern about their treatment.

5. Are there other groups that should be included?

Groups that should be included are generally universal, such as women, ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community, and the elderly. Depending on what country's perspective you are considering these cohorts, the issues surrounding them are different. In America, women need support for efforts that advocate things such as equal wages, while in other countries, women are still struggling for the right to receive an education.

6. If you had to add one guiding principle to the Belmont Report what would it be?  Why?

If I had to add one guiding principle to the Belmont Report, it would be to advocate awareness for the reasoning why there are limits imposed on how you could utilize one group. It is easy to say "no, you cannot test this group because it violates something," but it is also just as important to make sure that it is known why someone should not do these things. They are not just rules imposed to make their research harder, they are meaning to protect a group before their rights are being abused and knowledge of these reasons are important.

Project Update - 3/27/2014

In class, our progress on our project moved rather slowly today. We are trying to gauge a new time frame to work under to ensure that we could complete every aspect of our job fair, but we were halted when it came down to picking a date for our job fair so that we could book a room. We checked every weekend and Thursday in April, but there was always some event going on that prevented us from using each date. The location and time of the job fair is a major factor because that is what determines how many people can fit in the venue, and also, how many WP students would be able to actually attend the event. We also took the school schedules of the WP students into consideration more than we took the Siena student's schedule into consideration because it would be easier to get more Siena volunteers than getting WP volunteers, and the event is for them after all.

Our research was also delayed due to the fact that we did not receive a response from the Career Center. Last week, Lexi emailed the career center in order to set a meeting with them to discuss possible jobs that the refugees could obtain and how we could optimize the experience that the students have at our event. After realizing that we did not receive a response from the Career Center, I called them to assure that our email actually sent and they had seen it. Once the center apologized for not responding to the email, they sent a follow up email to a counselor that could help us. We are still waiting back to hear.

During WP next Thursday, we will do an activity with the students to get them thinking and speaking to us about what they would like to do with their futures.

Job Fair Focus Group

What would you want to learn from the focus group?

From our focus group, we could learn what the Writing Partnership students are expecting after high school and what they would like their futures to become.

What kind of questions would you ask?

We would ask questions such as:

• How old are you?/What grade are you in?
• What are your interests in school?
• What are your hobbies?
• How do you picture your life in the next few years?

Who would you invite? How would you get them there?

We would invite the students from Writing Partnership who attend high school. Their level of completed high school education does not matter because we would then be able to have a range of ages. If we have a range of ages, then we would be more prepared to help with the transition of the students' needs over their time in school. We would schedule our focus group during one of the Writing Partnership meetings and separate the students that we are asking to participate. 

What obstacles would you likely encounter in your focus groups? How would you overcome these obstacles?

Obstacles that we would overcome are having the students not quite understand the purpose of us doing this. Also, they might have answers such as they want to play soccer when they grow up, and we would want them to pick more attainable options. So we would have to introduce them to other options without guiding them towards a specific option.

What would you hope to gain from a focus group for your project?  

I would hope that we gain more of an insight into what the students expect to happen after their high school career. Once we do, we would be able to help them reach their goals or develop a plan if they are not sure what their specific goals are.