The relationship between creative written and verbal expression and attitudes toward violence - Dissertation Example

?Chapter III: Method The primary purpose of this research project is to examine the relationship between creative written and verbal expressions and attitudes toward violence among at-risk inner city middle and high school male students. Chapter III is divided into two parts: the research methods used and data analyses. The first section discusses the instrument used to measure the risk of violence, the population sample, and variables. The second section discussesthe data analysis methods to be used in the study and the analysis of techniques for each of the research questions. The chapter ends with a discussion of the limitations and advantages. Context of the Study The context of this quantitative research is the experience of juvenile violence among African-American males in New Orleans. New Orleans African American males are selected because New Orleans continues to struggle with a growing epidemic of domestic and interpersonal violence often resulting from stress related to incomplete recovery efforts from Hurricane Katrina, economic and housing challenges, the loss of community and neighborhoods, fragmented and broken familial structures, struggling schools, and untreated mental health issues (COMMONHealth Action, 2009, p. 3). In New Orleans violence is an “insidious public health crisis that jeopardizes the city, its children and youth, its residents, and their future” (COMMONHealth Action, 2009, p. 3). The proposed time frame for this case study is four weeks. During the four-week schedule, the researcher conducts the interviews, follow-up interviews and further document collection. Research Methods The current research aims to use a quasi experimental design, which is a variation of the true experimental design. Neuman (2003) identified seven parts to a classical or true experimental design: treatment or the independent variable, the dependent variable, pretest, post-test, experimental group, control group, and random assignment. When one or more of the parts of a classical or true experiment are lacking, the research design is known as a quasi-experiment. Such a research is called quasi because it is a variation of the classical or true experiment research design (Neuman, 2003), and has one or more factors of the true experimental design as missing. This quantitative study proposes to use a post-test only quasi-experimental design to address the research questions (Shaddish, Cook, and Campbell, 2002). Quasi-experimental design seems appropriate since the researcher finds it immpossible to randomly assign research participants, and also to conduct a pretest. As such, only a post-test will be distributed and non-random assignment of the participants is to be undertaken. Quasi-experimental designs are used to test whether educational practice makes a difference for individuals (Creswell, 2003). The treatment is defined in this proposed research project as a creative writing workshop, in which students are taught the elements of written and verbal expression. The treatment is considered to be complete once students construct a written creative expression and verbally share the written creative expression with the members of the treatment group. Neuman (2003) describes the concept of treatment as stimulus or manipulation, and in this case, the stimulus is the participation in the creative writing workshop. Post-treatment measures or the dependent variable that is considered in the research is the attitudes toward violence, and this will be collected and compared in order or determine whether there were significant differences in the attitudes changes of control and sample groups. . Research Design Research Instrumentat The Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) will be used as post-test for treatment and control groups. The test authors developed the SAVRY to provide a standard rubric that could be used by a variety of systems that need to assess and manage youth violence. The instrument is composed of three domains of risk factors, containing 24 items. The Summary Risk Rating is scored high risk, moderate risk, or low risk (Borum, Bartel, & Forth, 2006). The structured assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) is an assessment for evaluating the risk of violence in youth ages 12-18. The instrument is composed of three domains of risk factors, containing 24 items and one domain of protective factors, containing 6 items. The 24 risk factor items are assessed as low, moderate, or high. The Summary Risk Rating is scored as high risk, moderate risk, or low risk (Borum, Bartel, and Forth, 2006). The SAVRY can be used to assess an adolescent’s level of violence risk in various settings including in-patient hospitals, juvenile justice settings, residential treatment facilities, schools, mental health centers, and outpatient clinics. One of the main factors the SAVRY intends to assess is the Individual/Clinical Risk. This factor is intended to assess adolescent’s attitude, behavior status, and psychological functioning. As such, the use of SARVY ensures that the subject’s attutudes towards violent behaviour can be judged post the experiment. The SAVRY was modeled after the Historical/Clinical/Risk Management in terms of structure, but modifications were made in the item content to include risk factors derived from research and literature on child development, violence, and aggression specific to adolescence (McGowan, Horn, and Mellott, 2011). Previous studies that focused on the use of the SAVRY demonstrated fair to good predictive validity of the SAVRY total score for assessing generalized violence risk in adolescent populations. According to the study conducted by McGowan, Horn, and Mellott (2011), results provides empirical support for the use of a Structured Professional Judgment (SPL) model approach and the SAVRY as a promising method for conducting violence risk assessments in schools. The SAVRY is not only a national recognized and utilized instrument, the assessment has been proven by studies in the United Kingdom to be a reliable predictor of recidivism of adolescent offenders with conduct disorder (Dolan and Rennie, 2008). Population and Sample For this quantitative quasi-experimental study, African-American males whose range of age are between12 – 19 and who are attending or have attended New Orleans middle and high schools. The age range 12 – 19 is divided into four groups age 12 -13, age 14 – 15, age 16 -17, and age 18 – 19. Each age group has 2 – 4 participants. Each class total size will consist of 12-16 students. Two treatments groups will exist, middle and high school students respectively (consisting of age groups 12-13 and 14-15 for middle school and 16-17 and 18-19 for high school). Two control groups will exist, middle and high school students respectively using similar age grouping as in the case of sample. Diversity in experience, age, beliefs, and attitudes are to be purposely incorporated in the selection of the participants in order to obtain varied and vast information, central to the subject matter of the research (Patton, 1990). At the same time, the variations reveal the viability for a maximum uniqueness in perspective and increase the probability of “shared patterns that cut across age brackets and derive their significance from having emerged out of heterogeneity” (Patton, 1990, p. 172). As such, by using a diverse sample, it will be ensured that the scope of the findings is enhanced. Research Questions The research intends to explore the interaction among creative writing (poetry and other forms of literary arts), and reduction of juvenile violence among African-American males in New Orleans. Likewise, this study can pave a change not only in the appreciation of arts as a vehicle to reducing juvenile violence, but it also offer an opportunity to renew existing curriculum and offer alternatives that will make it more responsive to the problem of juvenile violence. In this sense, the research question serves as guide and also outlines the scope of the study The research question of the study is: 1. Does a relationship exist between written and verbally creative expression and attitude towards violence among at-risk inner-city middle and high School male students? Hypothesis H1: Learning how to creatively express oneself written and verbally has an effect on attitudes toward violence among at-risk African American Middle and High School male students. H0: Learning how to creatively express oneself written and verbally has no effect on attitudes towards violence among at-risk African American Middle and High School students. Variables Experiments refer to studies in which an independent variable is deliberately manipulated and a dependent variable is assessed (Creswell, 2003). This present study proposes a quasi-experimental method that contains an independent variable and a dependent variable. The independent variable or treatment in this study is a creative writing workshop that teaches creative written and verbal skill expression. The dependent variable is the score collected from the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) taken by participants, which measures adolescents’ risk for violence. Data Collection and Analysis Once a researcher identifies targeted population and gains permission to conduct research, the researcher then selects forms of data that will answer research questions and hypotheses (Creswell, 2003). Data collection includes types of measure and location of instruments to use (Cresswell, 2003). In order to practically start the collection of data, it is mandatory that the review board’s approval is attained. The proposed research takes into account all the above parameters. Itproposes to measure the participants’ risk for violence, which is a measure of an individual’s attitude (Creswell, 2005). The data collected will consist of the results from the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY), which will measure adolescents’ risk for violence and their attitude towards violence. The students in the treatment group will undergo the treatment, which is a creative writing workshop. This creative writing workshop consists of 4 sessions of 1 hour each. The sessions are to be taken twice a week for two weeks. The sessions would include a brief introduction to creative writing and tools and techniques and will also include writing assignments. The control group will receive no treatment, but will be tested on SARVY. After four weeks of treatment, the treatment group and the control group will be given the post-treatment assessment test, which is the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY). The scores from the post-test assessments will be compared between treatment and control groups, and analyzed to see if a causal relationship exist between creative written and verbal expression and attitudes toward violence. Descriptive statistics that indicate general tendencies (mean, mode, and median) will be used to describe the trend in the data to a single variable or question (Creswell, 2003). Based on the statistical outcome, the null hypotheses will be accepted or rejected. Ethical Considerations Considering the sensitivity of the issue tackled in this study together with the fact primary data gathered for this study were all derived from human subjects, the researcher at all times,endeavors to preserve, protect and respect the human dignity and autonomy of all the participants. Some of the ethical issues concerning participation of human subjects include “(a) gaining permission from participants, (b) privacy and confidentiality of individuals, and (c) providing an accurate account of the data collected” (Yin, 2009, p. 73). Prior to the conduct of the study, the researcher intends to contact the prospective participants informing them of the study, its purpose, the questions it seeks to address, and on how their participation will augment this study. The researcher will provide the participants necessary information that would help them decide whether to participate or not in the study. Only after the consent of the participants and or parent is secured, will the discussion for possible schedule of interviews and creative writing workshops be set. This is considered vital because the researcher believes that the interview and creative writing workshop should be done during the time and at a place that the participants are comfortable. The participants as well as proper authorities, will be given the consent form so that parties informed are aware that the participation of the interviewees was voluntary, and nobody was forced to share his story. In addition, to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of the participants, the researcher will use “aliases and pseudonyms for individuals and places to protect identities” (Creswell, 2003, p. 66). Instead of saying New Orleans, the report will describe the city as a southwestern urban city in the United States with a high crime juvenile rate. The schools identification will also be kept confidential and the report will identify schools as Middle High School A, Middle High School B, High School A, and High School B. Moreover, the researcher will disclose the data gathered from the assessments to the school officials. In this way, not only the validity and reliability of the data is maintained, but it also becomes the venue for the researcher to establish a respectful relationship with the participants (Hatch, 2002). Finally, these ethical considerations are paramount in the validity and reliability of the data collected. As such, the ethical considerations mentioned in this study are essential for the entire study. Limitations and Threats Threats to internal validity include maturation of teens and confounding variables such as messages students may receive from other educators or exposure to positive or anti-violence campaigns. One of the limitations to this proposed study include the most common limitation in a quasi-experiment when compared to a true experiment and that is not being able to randomly assign participants (Shaddish, Cook, and Campbell, 2002). Another limitation of the proposed research project is that the two groups might not be necessarily the same before any treatment take place. Assumptions In the writing of this research, certain assumptions are deemed as influencing the researcher in the course of study. These assumptions are: first, juvenile violence is a contemporary phenomenon brought about by factors present only in this period (Loeber & Hay, 1997). Second, the study assumes that there is no single entity or individual solely responsible for solving the problem. In fact, the need for collaborative effort is required to solve the problem (CommonHealth, 2009). Third, the problem of juvenile violence will affect not only the youth of today, but also will have an impact on the children of tomorrow. Finally, the researcher assumes that creative writing and verbal expressive skills will result in a change in attitude towards expressing oneself violently. Chapter Summary The purpose of this quantitative study is to explore the relationship, if any exist, between creative written and verbal expression and attitudes toward violence. To accomplish this purpose, the researcher intends to employ the quasi-experimental research design. Chapter three explained the research method and the dependent and independent variables. Context of the study was explained, the African American Males residing in what is considered the murder capital of the United States. Instruments involved were also explained which included the defined measurement. The primary data collect in the present study includes the scores from post-tests of the treatment and control groups. Data analysis to occur was explained along with limitations, threats to internal validity, and assumptions of the study. Population and sample size were defined, along with the geological location of the proposed study. 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