SSW Research & Evidence-Based Practice 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A school social worker wants to understand the lived experiences of immigrant students navigating school systems. Which research methodology is MOST appropriate?
- Randomized controlled trial
- Meta-analysis of existing studies
- Phenomenological qualitative study (Correct answer)
- Epidemiological prevalence survey
Correct answer: Phenomenological qualitative study
Phenomenological qualitative methodology is designed to explore and describe the lived experiences and meanings individuals assign to their experiences.
Question 2: The PICO framework used in evidence-based practice stands for:
- Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome (Correct answer)
- Problem, Inquiry, Context, Observation
- Participants, Implementation, Control, Objectives
- Practice, Information, Criteria, Operations
Correct answer: Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome
PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) is a structured format for formulating clinical questions to guide evidence searches.
Question 3: Which of the following represents the highest level of evidence in a traditional evidence hierarchy?
- Expert opinion and clinical guidelines
- Single randomized controlled trial
- Systematic review or meta-analysis of multiple RCTs (Correct answer)
- Cohort study with large sample
Correct answer: Systematic review or meta-analysis of multiple RCTs
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses that synthesize multiple RCTs are at the top of the evidence hierarchy because they pool data to provide the most reliable estimates of effect.
Question 4: A school social worker is required to obtain IRB approval before conducting research. What is the PRIMARY reason for this requirement?
- To ensure the research will be published in peer-reviewed journals
- To protect human research participants from harm and rights violations (Correct answer)
- To verify the researcher's credentials and training
- To guarantee the study will have statistically significant results
Correct answer: To protect human research participants from harm and rights violations
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) exist to protect human subjects from physical, psychological, social, and legal harms in research.
Question 5: A school social worker is implementing a program and tracks data weekly using a graph to determine if a student's behavior is improving. This is BEST described as:
- Summative evaluation at program completion
- Progress monitoring through single-subject design (Correct answer)
- Needs assessment for program planning
- Cost-benefit analysis of the intervention
Correct answer: Progress monitoring through single-subject design
Ongoing weekly data collection and graphing of individual student behavior is characteristic of single-subject design used for continuous progress monitoring.
Question 6: When adapting an evidence-based intervention for a culturally diverse student population, the school social worker should FIRST:
- Replace all intervention components with culturally specific content
- Identify the core components that produce the intervention's effects before adapting surface features (Correct answer)
- Abandon the evidence-based model and create a new intervention
- Obtain a new grant to fund program development
Correct answer: Identify the core components that produce the intervention's effects before adapting surface features
Effective cultural adaptation preserves core active ingredients (mechanism of change) while adapting surface features like language, examples, and delivery to fit the population.
Question 7: A school social worker reads a study reporting a confidence interval of [2.1, 8.4] for the mean reduction in anxiety scores. What does this mean?
- The true effect is exactly 5.25 points
- We are 95% confident the true population mean difference falls between 2.1 and 8.4 (Correct answer)
- The results are not statistically significant
- The sample size was between 2 and 8 participants
Correct answer: We are 95% confident the true population mean difference falls between 2.1 and 8.4
A 95% confidence interval indicates that if the study were repeated many times, 95% of such intervals would contain the true population parameter.
SSW Research & Evidence-Based Practice 5
A school social worker wants to understand the lived experiences of immigrant students navigating school systems.
Which research methodology is MOST appropriate?