Discussion: Instruments Measuring Resiliency

Social workers strive to make informed decisions  about the interventions they implement. These decisions should be  driven by what the research data say. As a result, social workers have  been called to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of the  interventions they implement. A common way to evaluate interventions is  to use a single-subject design. This involves monitoring an outcome for  an intervention implemented for one client. After a social worker works  with the client to determine the outcome to be measured, the following  steps to the evaluation might look like this:

• Administer the instrument before the intervention is implemented
• Implement the intervention
• Administer the same instrument, after a specified time period 
• Monitor to determine if there have been any changes in the outcome 

In this Discussion, you use the lens of  resiliency theory when reflecting on a case from your fieldwork, and  then you consider how to measure the effectiveness of a possible  intervention.

To prepare, read this article listed in the Learning Resources:

• Smith-Osborne, A., & Whitehill Bolton K. (2013). Assessing resilience: A review of measures across the life course. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 10(2), 111–126. doi:10.1080/15433714.2011.597305

By Day 3

Post:

• Reflect on your fieldwork experience, and identify a case where it  would have been beneficial to employ resiliency theory. Describe the  case in 2 sentences. 
• Describe the presenting problem in one concise sentence. 
• Describe an intervention you would implement to promote resiliency. 
• Identify an instrument from the Smith-Osborne and Whitehill  Bolton’s article that would be appropriate when employing a  single-subject design to evaluate how effective the intervention is in  increasing the client’s level of resiliency.
• Explain why you selected the instrument.
  • In other words, why would the instrument be appropriate? (Consider  the age of the client and for whom the instrument was designed, how  feasible it would be to administer the instrument such as cost, time to  administer it, etc.).