The Tuesday Letter
Agricultural Experiment Station & Cooperative Extension Service
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
(Vol. 18 No. 11)
IN THIS ISSUE...
WORD FROM THE ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR - EXTENSION AND APPLIED RESEARCH
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." From Strength to Love by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968. Such a powerful quote from Dr. King, and one that should resonate with the Extension professional.
I am promoting the Navigating Difference training being presented by your colleagues on our KSRE Change Agent States team for diversity. Speaking of Dr. King's quote, here is an example where several of your colleagues stepped out of their comfort zone, and are committed to advancing the culture of inclusiveness for faculty and staff across K-State Research and Extension. They are providing a perfect response to one of our K-State Research and Extension core values.
K-State Research and Extension (KSRE) and the Change Agent States
team is offering Navigating Difference Training to ALL KSRE
employees. I am pleased to know several of you have stepped up to take advantage of this professional development opportunity and have registered for this training. The first in-depth training opportunity is coming up February 14-16 in Lawrence, and taught by your own colleagues! A second opportunity will be in Garden City in November. The Navigating Difference training provides:
- A set of skills to enhance your work with diverse audiences;
- A solid foundation in intercultural communications theory and practice;
- Opportunities to apply new learning in your work.
For more information and registration, please visit http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/FCS/p.aspx?tabid=123.
Registration is due by January 30, 2012. I believe this training is so important that all costs for this training are being covered centrally, including your lodging costs. All you need to do is to get to the training! You can send an email and reserve your place in the training by contacting Linda Lamb, llamb@ksu.edu, or Susie Wilkinson susiew@ksu.edu.
The Kansas demographic profile is changing, and probably doing so right within your community. Extension professionals must respond with awareness and understanding of those changes. We must lead efforts in local communities to develop an appropriate response through needs assessment, educational programming, and leadership. Navigating Difference is an ideal training to begin the process of preparing you to recognize and respond effectively and appropriately to societal differences. I hope you will take the challenge and sign up for this in-depth training. It will be worth your valuable time!
Looking forward to Partnership meetings this week and next! Also, looking forward to meeting each of our candidates for the Director of K-State Research and Extension and Dean of Agriculture! And, have a great week! --Daryl Buchholz dbuchhol@ksu.edu
ASK THE OEIE EVALUATOR: INDIVIDUAL OR GROUP-LEVEL DATA
Program evaluations can gather and utilize data collected from
individuals or groups. Determining whether to collect individual-level
or group-level data is a decision that should be made early in the
evaluation process, as this decision impacts the format of the
evaluation instruments and the conclusions you will be able to draw. In
this installment, we discuss why and how you may choose to focus on
individuals and/or groups in your evaluation.
Q: Should I collect data from individuals or from groups in my evaluation?
In social research, the "unit" (or "element") describes the particular entity of focus in a study. The unit of interest could be individuals, groups, artifacts (e.g., books, photos), geographical units (e.g., towns, census tracts), or social interactions
(e.g., meetings, divorces). Most frequently studies will refer to the "unit of analysis" because typically the analysis you do in your study
decides what the unit will be. However, it is important to think about
the unit (or units) of interest early in an evaluation project,
especially when you design the evaluation and develop your instruments.
If you are interested in knowing about individuals and
how they experienced or benefited from a program, then it is important
to make sure that your evaluation design and instruments allow you to
gather and analyze data at the individual-level. Collecting data from
individual participants may be especially valuable if you want to track
individual change between a pre- and post- program survey. Individual
data permits a wide variety of statistical analyses. Plus, you maintain
the ability to collapse individual data into various groupings, such as a "session," or along demographic variables, like age or level of
education. In this way, you can have different units of analysis within
one design. However, collecting, managing, and entering data for
individual participants can often be time-consuming and, therefore,
require more resources.
Typical methods for collecting individual-level data are surveys and
individual interviews. With such methods you will collect data specific
to an individual; for example, the individual's unique responses to
questions about what they learned from participating in your program. To
ensure that data stays connected to individuals, a unique ID of numbers
and/or letters is typically assigned to individuals and connected to
the data to be entered into a dataset like in Microsoft Excel. (The
unique ID also helps preserve the confidentiality of your program
participants.) If you want to track the responses of the same
individuals between a pre- and post-program survey, it is important to
make sure these IDs are exactly matched to individuals both pre- and
post-program.
If you are more interested in gathering data for groups
or have concerns about the time and resources available for evaluation,
you may choose a different approach. When you collect group-level data,
for example, by noting your observations of the group in a session, you
can get a sense of how groups overall experience or benefit from your
program. Such an approach can gather useful data about your program and
be more practical with regard to time and resources. However, without
individual-level data you lose the opportunity to examine how
individuals changed between pre- and post-program surveys (e.g.,
individual change in knowledge or skills), how individual factors may
associate with program impacts (e.g., previous experience with the
topic), as well as the ability to regroup individuals according to new
groupings of interest (e.g., those who adopted best practices versus
those who didn’t).
Group-level data can be collected through observations, focus group
interviews, or survey methods that pool together responses, such as
using "clicker" technology to poll participants. Because you are not
attending to each piece of individual-level data, collecting, managing,
and entering group-level data collected from these methods can be easier
and more efficient. However, analysis and interpretation of the data
will always be at the group-level and cannot move back to the
individual-level.
Questions about evaluation? Visit the Extension Evaluation Resources
website at http://apps.oeie.ksu.edu/extension/index.php, or contact Amy
Hilgendorf at OEIE, aehilgen@k-state.edu, 785-532-5538. --Amy Hilgendorf
ADVANCED YOUTH DEVELOPMENT (AYD) TRAINING OF TRAINERS SNAPSHOT - FEBRUARY 9
Advancing Youth Development (AYD): Training-of-Trainers Curriculum Snapshot will be held on February 9 in Manhattan, as part of Agent Update.
Advancing Youth Development (AYD) is a national curriculum from Cornell University designed to train youth development leaders and stakeholders in principles, processes and practices necessary for quality youth work. The full training of trainers is comprised of 8 modules which can be covered in a 6-10 hour training experience. This 4 hour session provides a 'snapshot' of the training which can be scheduled for your local unit. A cadre of Kansans have already been trained by Cornell University in AYD and are ready to help train others to support positive youth development.
Register now to attend the February 9 (Thursday - 8 a.m.-12 p.m.) 4-hour AYD curriculum 'snapshot' held during Agent Update in Manhattan. See Agenda and Registration information at www.ksre.ksu.edu/employee_resources/p.aspx?tabid=206.
For a fee of $30, participants receive training from Cornell's approved AYD trainers (Elaine Johannes, Marcia Dvorak and Kansas Enrichment Network staff), materials and refreshment break.
AYD snapshot training participants will:
* Gain familiarity with the AYD content and how use this content to work with young people.
* Strengthen their ability to communicate their youth development ideas, expertise and experience to their constituencies: board members, families, co-workers, community leaders, and youth.
* Plan how to become part of an informal AYD network throughout Kansas.
For more information, contact Elaine Johannes, ejohanne@ksu.edu, or 785-532-7720. --Elaine Johannes
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