a. What is the survey? An open-ended survey of impressions about the emotional reactions of students to first direct practice clients in their internships, what students do regarding self care to handle the additional stress created by their clients, the role of the field educator and field liaison regarding self care, the differences between those who thrive in the placement and those who do not, and how best to prepare students before, during, and after their field placement/practicum.

b. Why do the survey? The purpose of the program of research is to understand the immediate and long-term psychosocial and emotional impact of the initial field experience on MSW students during, immediately following and long afterwards.

a. What is the research procedure to be followed?

We plan to utilize a three-phase, mixed method survey approach through an email listserve that enables sending messages directly to the research participants who are asked to respond (hitting reply) to insure accurately accounting of who responded when and prevent double or erroneous responding.

 Phase I: Implement a Delphi-like survey that asks the research participants to identify (1) the primary sources of emotional stress among students working with their first direct practice clients in their internships; (2) the stress reactions among these students that either (a) help or (b) hurt in their (c) self care and the (d) care to clients; (3) coping methods used by these students that either help or hurt themselves or their clients, (4) methods used by field educators and field liaisons to address students' stress reactions and self care and; (5) the overall observations about how to better prepare and work with students during the placement and what help they need well into their career as direct practice social workers?

Phase II: Questionnaire construction method that will distribute to the research participants a questionnaire that they can complete and return. The questionnaire would consist of items generated from Phase I (eliminating duplicates and editing for spelling and syntax) and the research participants would be asked to indicate the degree to which they endorse each observation about the emotional reactions of students' initial direct practice clients.

Phase III: Survey of field faculty and educators using the newly developed MSW Student Reactivity Questionnaire (MSRQ) . The survey would be conducted of all Florida field educators and the results would help to establish the reliability and validity of MSRQ.

 

b. Who will be surveyed? Those who currently serve or have served in the last two years as field educators and current faculty liaison. Phase I and II would include those affiliated with FSU. The Phase III survey would include those from throughout Florida . This would mean utilizing the Field Education Consortium or approaching each of the other 7 universities with accredited MSW programs. See

http://www.cswe.org/cgi-local/programs_search.pl?matchfield1=7&search=FL