| Summary: | This is the report of four social work students engaged in the process
of developing a longitudinal study. The original concerns guiding the enquiry
involved two general concepts: (I) non-utilization of agency services and
(II) lack of awareness re such services. It was felt that a large risk
population are not aware of the services available to them and thus they
were unable to utilize community resources. The public relations program
has also felt to be a factor which should be examined.
In order to study this problem in an actual setting, the Family and
Children's Service's Fernwood-GIadstone neighbourhood team was chosen as
the vehicle for the research project.
This study is an attempt to design a data collection instrument which
will measure the level of awareness about a particular agency team and Its
program in a specific community. The instrument developed was a questionnaire
designed to elicit responses concerning:
(I) what people know about a particular agency team and
its program.
(II) what people know about the general services of an agency.
(III) what people think of the method of publicity used
by the agency.
The questionnaire was administered to a population selected through
utilizing the multiple phase sampling of the random sampling techniques.
The responses to the questionnaire are precoded to facilitate the use of
the MVTAB computer program in the analysis of the data obtained.
The material obtained from the pretest sample indicates that the
instrument will obtain the desired Information. The highly tentative
findings (due to the small sample size) suggest that the members of the
community studied have a general knowledge about the Family and Children's
Service agency but are not as aware of the agency team operating out of
an office in their community. The respondents stated a general willingness
to utilize the services of this team when needed. This suggests that
advertising is important that methods utilized thus far have not been too
successful.
Based on the findings of the pretest it is recommended that the data
collection instrument be refined and a full study be conducted. === Arts, Faculty of === Social Work, School of === [co-authors, John Farr,
Robert Leach,
George Phillon] === Graduate
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