Research Designs and Measures

Title Your Name Subject and Section Professor’s Name Date 1 Describe the activity, outputs, and SMART objectives. The activity entails the completion of two particular courses in the UIU MPA program, namely, Introduction to Program Evaluation (PA 502) and Program Evaluation Implementation and Evaluation (PA 503) (Upper Iowa University, 2023). The primary expected outcome is to produce policy analysis and decision-making experts. The SMART objectives are structured to achieve immediate, medium, and long-term goals. This entails increasing the enrollment of these courses via extensive advertisement during the next semester, that at least 90% of the UIU MPA students will land a position in public administration within the next two years, and that the employment ratio for MPA graduates should be at least 80% as opposed to students with no MPA by the time they complete their program, respectively. 2 Program managers want to know if the output from the activity is helping the organization achieve its SMART objective. In a single short sentence, identify the research question. "In current and prospective students of Upper Iowa University MPA program (P), how does the revised curriculum (I) versus the existing curriculum (C) impact academic achievement and impact employment rates (O) after one year of graduation (T)? 3 Operationally define the dependent variable (outcome measures). Discuss issues with reliability and face validity. Dependent Variables Based on Royse et al.’s (2015) discussion, the dependent variables are academic achievement and employment rates. Academic performance is the first variable that will be assessed, and this shall be analyzed by looking at the student's grades, their ability to complete their homework and on-site activities in time, batch ranking, and the outcomes of their capstone projects. These elements will allow the researcher to understand the extent of their knowledge in public administration. Next, the employment rate will be computed based on the percentage of graduates who are employed in any job within the field of public administration within a year after graduation. This will inform the researchers on the effectiveness and applicability of the revised curriculum for preparing learners for their future careers (Caingcoy et al., 2021). Reliability and Face Validity Inter-rater reliability, or the kappa, is crucial in assessing the outcomes of the capstone projects since these may be purely qualitative, quantitative, or a mixture of both. Specifically, inter-rater reliability is significant in evaluating subjective probabilities because the "raters" will provide scores, allowing objectivity. If the scores ...