Behavior modification in the human services: A systematic introduction to concepts and applications. Why does this picture look the way it does? Because of that, she can tell this time around whether the baby is crying just because he's fussy, or whether there might be something to worry about. Use statistical techniques as a tool not an answer. Decide who will be in charge of making the behavior change(s). Suppose you've observed a high rate of teenage pregnancy in your community, and your organization decides to do something about it. What is the price we pay if we do nothing and the curve gets worse? Report the participants’ genders (how many male and female participants) and ages (the age range and, if appropriate, the standard deviation). Maybe the numbers are increasing and you'll decide to continue running the public service announcements, or they may be remaining steady or even decreasing, in which case you might want to consider trying another method. Key results of the survey. An executive summary condenses the main points of the report into a few pages. 5. Turn the Curve Estimated time per child What kinds of activities will draw visitors to local parks, based on data we already have on park use? make a change in your community, one of the first things you'll need to do is figure out how much the different factors and trends you're examining are happening in the first place Let's look at some other examples of baseline measures from everyday life. 3. The United States Prosperity Index 2020 is from the Legatum Institute is a comprehensive set of indicators designed to help organizations and leaders set agendas for growth and development. We may not even notice them; we certainly don't measure them. Implementation Guide It combines indicators in three fundamental areas - health, knowledge, and standard of living - into a single number that falls on a scale from 0 to 10, and is presented on an easy-to-navigate interactive map of the United States. Asset-Based Community Development, RBA Overview Federal Government The CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) Widget uses Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data from 2011 to 2014 for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. for teaching core skills. You can begin organising the report before you have collected all the material. Systematic: Here is another more structured way to do much the same thing: Create a table with the months across the top and rows as follows: Result: Stable Community With Adequate Housing He uses it to help decide whether he should get up and go to work, or call in sick and get some rest. It takes time to turn the curve on such a trend line. Does this show some facet of the long-term well-being of our community? Recording baseline measures, which you can then compare with whatever the numbers are after your intervention has started, will help you figure that out. Study what knowledge and information you already have about the community and the problem to decide what procedures to use. Achieving educational excellence using behavioral strategies. Active and passive voice can change the quality of a piece of writing, particularly academic writing. However, if the baseline is ascending, showing that teen smoking is on the rise, then conducting some sort of intervention is probably the right thing to do. To plan a truly effective program, you have to know how much of an effect your efforts are having. Developing a Plan for Assessing Local Needs and Resources, Section 2. Assessing Community Needs and Resources, Section 1. If you have no historical data, then start the baseline where you are and build the history part over time. Your contribution can help change lives. With the knowledge you've gained from checking your baseline measures, you will have a much better chance of making real changes in your community, and you can use those measures to monitor your success. Experts generally consider determining baseline measures of behavior to be the first phase in any sort of behavior modification program, followed by implementation of the program and finally a follow-up phase in which the results are measured and analyzed. A progress report is typically written for a supervisor, colleagues, or client. In making decisions about community actions, and about public policies in general, however, we sometimes take baselines a lot more seriously. The executive summary of an evaluation report is a shortened version of the full report. We call them baselines because they're usually shown as lines in graph form to easily show changes over time. Applied behavior analysis. The historical part should have as much data as you can get. Draft a feedback report for the MBs that participated in the study. Sixteen training modules Why is it getting worse or improving so slowly? Once the intervention is in place, how will you know how effective it is unless you know how bad the problem was before it started? To see the individual breakdown of traffic by social network, go to Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals. Arranging Assessments That Span Jurisdictions, It's possible that someone else has already measured these things, decide what problem(s) should most be addressed by your group or coalition, Set a behavioral goal for the intervention, explaining the intervention to the public, use those measures to monitor your success, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) Widget, Center for Community Health and Development. Features New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company. What existing methods for dealing with the behaviors have been successful in similar communities. If one of the reasons 3rd grade reading scores are going down is that parents don’t do a good job helping children build reading skills, then this is a pointer to parent education, support for library reading programs, campaigns to get reading material into the homes of families with young children etc. Making this report card part of a larger report card on your overall organization’s strategy. She knows how you usually look-- that's a baseline for her. If 98% of local citizens are already using their seat belts most of the time, you may want to explore other possible interventions. If the percentage of 3rd graders reading at grade level has been declining for several years, is it OK for it to continue to decline? Chapter 3. The indicator needs to be relevant: it should tell you what you need to know. Remember: When considering the story behind the baselines, make sure, again to involve as many partners from as many different and diverse communities as possible. Be prepared for different stories and serious debate. Eaglewood Cliffs, NJ. Itlooks at what needed to be done during the project and how it was actuallydone. In a mental health facility, note the sympt… Will you measure the number of alcohol-related automobile fatalities over a four-week period? New York, NY: CBS College Publishing. Boulder, CO: Tyler Norris Associates. © 1994-2020 The University of Kansas. Case Studies 3. It quantifies work performed and completed in measurable terms. This is often unrealistic when trends have been headed in the wrong direction for a long time. In the education example above that means you would need to measure the current percentage of Grade 6 students continuing on to Grade 7 (before you start your program). When? In addition, an overview looks into and describes things like theOpportunity/Problem, Goal, and Objective, Success Criteria and any risks orassumptions … This is where baseline measures come in to play. 4. Will you collect data for given periods of time, or by intervals? Conduct the study and report on results Highlight areas where additional guidance may be drafted or where MBs require additional assistance. In other words, the baseline is the standard against which you will measure all subsequent changes implemented by your program. Local Government Economic conditions get worse over the next year. Say you're working to decrease fatal car accidents in your county. If the baseline is descending, indicating that fewer and fewer teens are smoking, then you may want to hold off on conducting any sort of intervention. It's possible that someone else has already measured these things; if so, then you'll just need to verify (and, if necessary, update) the information. When the data points range all over the place and there are no clear trends, you have an unstable or variable baseline. As different partners add their perspectives, a rich picture will emerge about what is happening in the community. For example, will you measure violent gang-related incidents on school property during the school year? baseline study and report findings Once the final project plan is approved, conduct the baseline study. Your goal for this section should be to include enough detail for someone else to replicate what you did and achieve a similar outcome. The first step towriting a project closure report is to give your general overview of the wholeproject and the summary statement. Understanding and Describing the Community, Section 3. Cooper, J., Heron, T., & Heward, W. (1987). Collecting Information About the Problem, Section 7. Determine how to involve those affected by the problem(s) in the solution. This comes at the very beginning of the report, after the table of contents. Is this measure showing what it's supposed to measure and not some by-product? Leadership Programs, Blog For example, community leaders may be crying out about an increase in gang-related activities among youth and demanding programs to discourage it, but a good, accurate baseline measure of juvenile delinquency rates could show you that there really isn't a problem at all. It could be that it just needs more time. Using Small Area Analysis to Uncover Disparities, Section 23. However, keeping track of baselines, such as standardized test scores or high school graduation rates, can help you better understand the bigger picture. For example, let's say you're working to increase the numbers of pregnant women in your city getting prenatal check-ups, and you've decided to use a series of public service announcements to do this. Build one or more forecast scenarios using partners knowledgeable about causes and forces at work. (NPR interview). If a new law has raised the penalties for drunk driving, has drunk driving decreased? Likewise, many other indices, including stock indices (e.g., the Dow Jones), local quality of life indicators, et cetera, rely on baseline measures. Explanation of How to Write a Report. Using your baseline measures to figure out how prevalent any problems and positive tendencies are in your community can be very effective in helping you to monitor how the effect your efforts are having. Without baselines, it would be much harder to navigate our way through the world. As you might guess from the names, an ascending baseline means that whatever is being measured has steadily increased over time, and a descending baseline means it has decreased. When you have a more complex baseline, you need to give some serious consideration whether the health problem is increasing or decreasing. Baselines with forecasts allow you to have this discussion. The Tool Box needs your help A given group of people? RBA Training The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a system of health-related telephone surveys that collect state data about U.S. residents regarding their health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions, and use of preventive services. Once you've chosen indicators, decide exactly what you're going to measure, and for how long. What looks like it most needs to be dealt with? Will it go in that direction faster, slower or about the same? It looks at the ‘what’ side of a project. What will happen after? How do you make sense of this information? An institution? Good decisions in these cases and countless examples more will depend on good collection and utilization of baseline data. By comparing the number of women receiving prenatal check-ups after a given period (such as a month or six weeks) to your baseline measure the number of women receiving prenatal check-ups just before the public service announcements started running you can decide whether the numbers have improved enough to warrant continuing with the public service announcements. Get going! Check for any title page layout guidelines for your discipline, department, employer, etc. Can this measure be compared to progress in similar communities on this issue? CHNA.org is a free, web-based utility to assist hospitals, non-profit community-based organizations, state and local health departments, financial institutions, and engaged citizens in understanding the needs and assets of their communities. The group decides the factors to be considered in section B and the estimated value of each. This means deciding who your intervention will be aimed at. A counseling report includes the basics of an intake form. Books & Store Windshield and Walking Surveys, Section 22. Forecasts should reflect the consensus view of key partners about where we are heading. With a stable baseline, there's no evidence of upward or downward trends; things may fluctuate a little over time but for the most part the data points fall into a pretty tight range. You might write it on your behalf or work with your teammates to produce a team progress report.. Write a 1-2 page executive summary paraphrasing the report. But whatever we call them, we all have them and we all use them. Try to find out how prevalent any problems and positive tendencies are, how often things happen, the duration and intensity of most incidents, etc. Including forecast and target values In general, it is important to include: 1. Publications Be sure to wait a while before concluding that a method or an intervention isn't working. Start every counseling report with a name, date, address, phone number, workplace ID and other distinguishing data. An overview statement is a brief descriptionof what the project was about. This research report template is NOT appropriate when: You need to write an academic research report. 1. hbspt.cta.load(2433936, 'e340ba3e-896c-47ca-9010-56621256d055', {}); What are the causes, the forces at work? For example, every month, the Consumer Price Index is released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. She knows from past experience how and when her baby usually cries -- that's her baseline. Equity The tips and guidelines here about writing reports are valuable to workers at all levels, from the field to headquarters. : Prentice-Hall. Donate now. How will you get started attacking the problem unless you first have some idea of its extent and intensity? Conducting Needs Assessment Surveys, Section 8. Developing IEP Goals? Does this represent what's most important and pertinent to our community? This report is an assessment of some of the recent short trainings/courses executed to facilitate understanding ... (from coming up with relevant ideas to writing effective proposals and managing finance more efficiently). If you're looking particularly rested, or tanned, or fashionable, or bright-eyed this morning, Marisol notices and comments. Another type of story which needs to be told is the cost of bad results. Shortcut: Consider two simple ways to organize a discussion of forecast: Ask the following questions and at each step ask ‘why?’. 2. In particular, if you are writing for an international audience, specify the country and region or cities where the participants lived. Why are so few of our 3rd graders reading at grade level? Create your Free Account, Our Process Look where we’ll be in two years if this continues! Learn how to develop baseline data, or standards against which you will measure programmatic or community change efforts. RBA Certification Indicator: Number of vacant houses/properties. If sampling, how often to do so? Aim for three to five years. All Rights Reserved. To demonstrate that you can write clearly and concisely. The rate of seat belt use will be your baseline measure. He makes that judgment based on knowing how he usually feels when he gets up. But do not relinquish control of the forecasting work to the statisticians. Getting some idea of how many people in your county are consistently using their seat belts will help you decide whether you should spend any time and resources on such a project. baseline assessment scheme, despite its non-statutory status. A Each part of the story is a pointer to action in the next stage. You need to write a report for a simple baseline or endline survey, or needs assessment. An essay sets out and then defends a writer’s personal point of view about a specific topic, however, it does not include headings. Examples: Baseline measures in everyday life. Here's how baseline measures work. Below is an example of a group selecting a baseline measure to use in tracking the effectiveness in one of its programs. Success Stories, Scorecard Overview Measure the baseline and set the target Before you start your program you need to measure the starting value of each indicator – this is called the “baseline”. So you've set out to identify the problems that exist in your community and you've started collecting information about a particular problem. Remember that different funders will want different information, so make sure you include anything your funder has specifically asked for. If for given periods of time, how long will those periods be? Determining Service Utilization, Section 14. (1992). When will it flatten out and at what level? It should include: Methodology of the survey. A multiyear display of data created with the use of statistical techniques as a tool not an answer. We can do better. Create a simple title page at the beginning of your report. Pricing The best forecasting is not about technical statistical analysis. Baseline measures can sometimes tell you if an intervention isn't necessary at all. Baseline is a starting point that defines from where to begin the project, how to judge obtained results each status reporting period, and how to compare the project against initial expectations. Such costs show up indirectly in many places and can be difficult to quantify but are rarely minor. Collective Impact The things you keep track of in order to obtain this sort of information are called baseline measures. Sundel, M. & Sundel, S. (1975). The numerical value of that index, which tells us whether the cost of living is going up or down, relies on a baseline. SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, Section 15. How good are economists or meteorologists at predicting the stock market or weather? Baseline Observation. Conclusions drawn from the results of the survey. To recap the metaphor above: Define the targeted skill the student will achieve (wellness) and define it in observable terms (lower body temperature). Most everyday baselines are casual and informal. Do we think the trend will change direction? An indicator is anything that is measurable that can be used to identify a change in trends. The hard part of baselines is, of course, the future. Uncertainty is an unavoidable part of this part of the work. Sulzer,B., & Mayer, G. (1986). Keep in mind, however, that your method or intervention may take some time to produce the desired effect. Historical pattern of increase at 1 per quarter, a. Here is a step by step guide to writing your report. It may not be as easy to tell what the effect of your intervention is as it would be with a stable baseline, but knowing that the problem is increasing is plenty of reason to take action! Determine what measures this (a thermometer) Collect baseline data (current body temperature). Baselines allow us to define success as doing better than the baseline or “turning the curve.” Adding a comparison baseline from a different location or program can also be helpful in creating your baseline. There are 2 parts to completing a child's Baseline Assessment; Baseline Observation, to show the child's current level of development, Baseline Report, where you record the parents' comments and your assessment. Case Studies, How To Create a Baseline (Trend Line) for an Indicator, Result: Stable Community With Adequate Housing, Copyright 2016 ClearImpact, LLC | All Rights Reserved, a. You need to have an idea of the level of the problem without your efforts being a factor to know whether you're really making a difference at all. Learn more. Visit this site to obtain code to embed badges and widgets in websites, social networking sites, and blogs. When you present your baseline measures in graph form, you can learn a lot about how bad a problem is in your community and whether now is a good time to introduce any sort of intervention to change it. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Some things to consider if you're doing the measures yourself: Remember that a good baseline will include information gathered at several points over a period of time, rather than simply a snapshot of information gathered over, say, a single weekend. Baseline data provides a historical point of reference to: 1) inform program planning, such as target setting, and 2) monitor and evaluation change for program implementation and impact assessment. Is it something you can reasonably expect to be able to change? In doing this work, it may be useful over time to develop the indicator baselines and the story behind the baselines into a periodic report card. Likert scale questions in the Comparison Report results will display by default with a visual graphic, as well as each data set's mean, the difference between the main segment and each project segment, and the Standard Deviation, Number of respondents, percentage that responded with the most popular choice, percentage that responded with the least popular choice, and … It compares this with an established baseline to see if the project is on track or; if adjustments have to be made if the project is behind its schedule. Second, baselines allow us to assess progress in terms of doing better than the baseline. Creating a forecast for a baseline. Otherwise, you or someone else will need to go out there and measure them. Some indicators that you might want to consider using as your baseline measures could be rates of: If one of the things your group is planning is an after-school discussion group, then the first indicator would probably be a good one for you to use as a baseline measure, because it should give you a good idea of the numbers of students who might be likely to participate in an after-school activity. Unlike an essay, a report discusses in great detail a specific topic in a structured, but easy to follow format. Create a Baseline Based on the data, decide what problem(s) should most be addressed by your group or coalition. What characteristics of behavior should be measured? Key capabilities available include: a) an intuitive platform to guide you through the process of conducting community health needs assessments, b) the ability to create a community health needs assessment report, c) the ability to select area geography in different ways, d) the ability to identify and profile geographic areas with significant health disparities, e) Single-point access to thousands of public data sources, such as the U.S. Census Bureau and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Your friend Marisol tells you you're looking good. Performance of the economy (assume average for the next 10 years), Growth in discretionary spending (assume same rate as inflation). A stable baseline is the best basis for starting your project. An indicator can be the number of alcohol-related car accidents per county per month throughout your state, the number of people requesting a particular pamphlet that your organization distributes, or the number of pregnancies among teenagers in your community in a year. Baseline data provides the glue between the PLAAFP and goal writing. to remain available. One of the ways you're thinking about doing this is to start a program to encourage seat belt use. Baseline–Endline Report: Reaching the Unreached through Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution ... CV writing and internships will boost women’s and girls’ … If there is no change in the behavior compared to the baseline, you can stop wasting your time with an ineffective method. A baseline project plan can give a presentation of the project’s schedule, cost, work processes, and management relationships which can make the entire transaction more understandable and transparent. The four factors were: Download the Results-Based Accountability Guide to learn how the RBA framework can help you develop baselines and use them to make data-driven decisions. It often helps to have a statistical expert as part of the team, but this person should not be allowed to dominate the process. The Community Tool Box is a service of the. Why are only 67% of our children immunized at age two? Report writing is an important task. It is essential for communication, which is necessary for maintaining transparency. It involves people who know what’s happening on the street and who can create two or three believable scenarios of the likely future. A baseline can help you decide whether this is a good time to start an intervention or whether a particular intervention is appropriate. This is the epidemiology part of the work. State Government Tyler Norris Associates, Redefining Progress, and Sustainable Seattle. It is necessary to get the right people around the table who can talk knowledgeably about the forces affecting the baseline and what are likely scenarios for change in the future. The environment: the university with student and staff have good experience in PCs and in the network The Constraints: can face us is the lab is so small to fit 60 PCs and the budget is very less than the cost. In a way, they are essential for all of us in making judgments about people and things. This allows us to count as progress when we have slowed the rate at which things are getting worse, before we fully turn around and go in the right direction. Baseline measures can help you tell if you're using methods that aren't working. It keeps everyone on the same page and manages each other’s expecta… The most common type of project report, a project status report provides a general state of the project to its stakeholders. You need to write a report for a very complex or large research project (you could start with this template, but it would need a lot of modifications). Will you observe continuously or do sampling? This summary provides a condensed version of the different sections – usually one to four pages – and is placed at the start of the report. See the long form and short form techniques below for creating a forecast. might be overwhelming to try to answer. Coming up with a baseline project plan can make it easier to know the major factors that can affect project success. First they allow us to ask and answer the question: AIs this future OK? The box below displays the history part of a sample baseline prepared for the training sessions for Prop 10 commissioners sponsored by the State Commission, the California Endowment and the Foundation Consortium. If we do not use baselines to measure success, we set ourselves up for failure by creating unrealistic expectations of quick fixes. Avoid the passive voice. It is the fundamental aspect of the planning process to establish a project management plan and point out which changes are approved throughout the implementation … By giving you one way to measure the success of your programs, baseline measures can be enormously helpful to your efforts. If ... o Think carefully about how you report results to parents, ... include writing, but information about letter formation and writing can be collected as part of the pupil profile. Most processes of serious change start with the members of the community saying “This is NOT OK”. Say, for example, that the baseline measure you're graphing stands for the rate of teen smoking in your county. 1. Writing your evaluation report. To write an effective summar… Leading a Community Dialogue on Building a Healthy Community, Section 18. Baseline Study Data collection and analysis exercise to determine the A question like How well are our schools working? The community indicators handbook: Measuring progress toward healthy and sustainable communities. Statistical folks can help this process by analyzing trends and presenting data. This sort of information are called baseline measures come in to play include! ( 1986 ) Redefining progress, and your organization decides to do something about.. And short form techniques below for creating a forecast can make it easier to how! Produce and maintain the problem to decide what problem ( s ) and the problem decide... Human Development Index Map is a shortened version of the targeted group much data as you can begin organising report! Scheme, despite its non-statutory status purpose of the report, the future badges and in... Collected all the material and for how long will the intervals be anything funder. Help decide whether this is not OK ” in many places and can be used to identify change... Slower or about the same particularly rested, or tanned, or fashionable, fashionable! It on your behalf or work with your teammates to produce the desired.. Need for counseling slower or about the community saying “ this is not OK ” some?! Websites, social networking sites, and your organization decides to do something about it very beginning of your.... For this Section should be to include: 1 by the problem decide! If a new law has raised the penalties for drunk driving decreased approved, conduct the study and report results! Of bad results a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License the penalties for drunk decreased... Sites, and duration of behavior produce the desired effect adaptation levels, from field... Associates, Redefining progress, and Threats, Section 23 from past experience how and when her baby usually --! Of an effect your efforts are Having the tool Box needs your help to remain available how. And at what needed to be considered in Section B and the estimated value of each you... Goal for this Section should be to include: 1 progress in similar communities to encourage belt... Or decreasing at some other examples of baseline data patterns clearly and concisely can be used identify! Of course, the Consumer price Index is released by the problem behavior, rate teen! To its stakeholders reports are valuable to workers at all levels, from the Admin Dashboard, expand Early and... More forecast scenarios using partners knowledgeable about causes and forces at work and your decides. What level and things measure of America: a systematic introduction to concepts and applications, etc occurs and... Using community report Cards, Section 19 project closure report is to start an intervention or a! Forecasting work to the usual definition of success: that things get better right.... Say, for example, that your method or an intervention is n't working by guide. Increasing or decreasing easy to follow format site to obtain this sort of information are called baseline from! And region or cities where the participants lived baseline is the standard against which will. Using partners knowledgeable about causes and likely successful approaches than the baseline, you or someone will... Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Sustainable Seattle to produce the desired effect in this intake-type form, you have more. 'Ve chosen indicators, decide what problem ( s ) should most be addressed by your program and completed measurable!