How Effective Is Afterschool Programs on At-Risk Youth

How Effective Is Afterschool Programs on At-Risk Youth - Evaluation Design
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How Effective Is Afterschool Programs on At-Risk Youth - Evaluation Design
Evaluation Design
The study will use the one-group pre/posttest design to evaluate the research question: Since the pandemic, what changes, if any indication that we need to make changes to afterschool programs to meet the mental health needs of those students we serve? The one-group pre/posttest design is a common technique used by behavioral and educational researchers to assess the effectiveness of an intervention, in this case, a program, on a given sample (Azid & Yaacob, 2016). In this model, a single group of participants is used, and certain variables of interest are measured by giving a pretest to participants before starting the intervention (program). After implementing the intervention, a post-test is conducted on the participants to measure the variables of interest and determine the program's efficacy. By collecting measurements before and after the program, intervention effects are typically determined by analyzing the differences between the two measures (Ma et al., 2018). This study will evaluate the program effectiveness of an afterschool program that incorporates mental health resources to at-risk students with anxiety and depression symptoms.
The research will investigate a unique afterschool program designed to meet the mental health needs of students identified as struggling with anxiety and depression. Besides recognizing and addressing mental health issues that threaten the learner's school success, the afterschool program must also aim at improving the social/behavioral outcomes for children with anxiety and depression. The afterschool program must be founded on the system of care model, organizational philosophy, and structure that entails collaboration between the institution, students, and families to ensure that the mental health resources provided are culturally and linguistically appropriate for children's parents. Through interagency cooperation, the afterschool program should provide culturally competent, strengths-based, and systems-focused mental health resources to learners with anxiety and depression symptoms.
A program using the system of care model (unlike other afterschool programs that operate in isolation and have significant gaps concerning the mental health resources provided to students) will be necessary to the study because of its ability to identify at-risk students with mental health issues and provide regular and ongoing mental health resources while maintaining critical links with key stakeholders, particularly parents. The afterschool program must provide the at-risk learners with training and tools to effectively deal with stress and regulate emotions. Facilitators should specifically focus on the personal and social skills of the afterschool program by providing opportunities for learning and developing social-emotional competencies. This study will focus on identifying how effective such a program is at reducing students’ internalizing symptoms as well as depression and anxiety levels. More importantly, the study will aim to determine those facets of the program, including activities and structures that facilitate learners’ acquisition of social-emotional competencies and reduce anxiety and depression symptoms.
The program will be evaluated by randomly selecting at-risk students who demonstrate symptoms of anxiety and depression but have never joined the afterschool program. Their mental health needs will be evaluated before receiving the training using a multi-method design (different validated questionnaires for assessing anxiety and depression levels will be issued to participants pre-test). The study will only use a single group of students (all participants will be in the same program and given the same assessments). At the same time, the variables of interest will be anxiety and depression. The researcher will measure learners’ anxiety and depression levels after three months of participating in the afterschool program. On the whole, the research will follow a linear ordering where students identified with anxiety and depression symptoms are tested first under the control condition and then tested again under the treatment condition. The advantage of the study's one-group pre/posttest design model is that it allows the investigator to determine if there are any noteworthy differences between the control condition and the treatment condition in a timely and cost-effective manner.
By analyzing anxiety and depression levels before and after the afterschool program intervention, the researcher will determine if the intervention was successful in reducing anxiety and depression levels, over and above, enhancing emotion regulation, and social/behavioral outcomes for at-risk students with mental health issues. More importantly, the researcher will be able to determine how much growth there was between the pretest and the posttest and even pinpoint those facets of the program, such as program activities and structures that facilitated the acquisition of social-emotional competencies and helped reduce anxiety and depression symptoms. This evaluation will help answer the research question, which seeks to identify if any changes can demonstrate the need to make changes to afterschool programs and better address the mental health needs of at-risk students. The afterschool program in question can help answer the research question since it is designed to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health resources to at-risk students.
If the program under investigation effectively alleviates mental health issues and improves social-emotional competencies, it would also be essential to understand what facets of the afterschool program facilitate these improvements so that they can be integrated into other school programs. To this end, it would be necessary to interview the administrators of the afterschool program. The study will conduct interviews with all stakeholders involved in the afterschool program to determine social/behavioral outcomes for children: such aspects of the study cannot be captured in-depth using quantitative methods alone. Holding interviews with the program’s organizers will allow the investigator to collect exhaustive information on what factors necessitate afterschool program revisions better to meet the mental health needs of at-risk students. Using a mixed-methods research design will ensure that the findings from the afterschool program study are grounded in facilitators' experiences, attitudes, and perceptions. A mixed-methods design also helps in reconciling any contradictions between quantitative findings and qualitative results: it allows for methodological flexibility and the collection of rich and comprehensive data to answer the research question (Palinkas, 2013).
Data Collection
Sampling Approach
The study will use the simple random sampling method to select at-risk students identified with anxiety and depression symptoms into the sample study. This sampling method will involve selecting the students entirely by chance so that every member of the population has the same chance to partake in the research. Learners identified with anxiety and depression symptoms will be given a number, and then a table of random numbers will be used to decide which students to include. The simple random sampling method is not only the most straightforward method of probability sampling, but it also allows the investigator to determine the sampling error and eliminate any selection bias (West, 2016). Purposive sampling will be used to select program facilitators for the study: the researcher will rely on personal judgment to select the most informative stakeholders of the afterschool program to participate in the interviews. The investigator will access a particular subset of program facilitators who can provide in-depth information on what changes necessitate afterschool program revisions to meet better the mental health needs of those students they serve. Some of the advantages of selective sampling include its time and cost-effectiveness and its intuitive approach (Palinkas, 2013). An intuitive approach will be critical to uncovering factors that indicate the need to make changes to afterschool programs better to meet the mental health needs of at-risk students.
Measurement Instruments
The study will use surveys, interviews, as well as participant and non-participant observation as measurement instruments. In order to assess students' anxiety levels, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-7) will be used...