With my time in the Social Research and Program Evaluation course, I have learned several skills that will benefit my future employment. Before this class, I had little to no knowledge of Social Research I have written research papers before, but these did not include real-world applications. The research that our class was performing was done to benefit the families in preschools in Prince Edward County and surrounding areas. For this research, we’re examining the level of family involvement based on the Family Fun Time Activities that were made by another course at Longwood University. The Family Fun Time Activities were made in hopes of increasing the level of family involvement in the household and the survey that our class made was to assess how successful the family fun time activities were in improving the level of family involvement.
By taking this class I have learned vital skills such as the proper format of a survey, including both open and close-ended questions, how to analyze quantitative and qualitative data, and I have also learned how to use software such as rstore and excel worksheets to analyze the data. For this course, we collaborated with a different class called Stress and Crisis in Families to make a survey that answered their smart objectives for the Family Fun Time Activities. I was able to learn how surveys need to be formatted to make them clear and concise to the person taking the survey. This was done through both lectures and hands-on opportunities where we worked in groups to come up with the questions that would be placed on the survey. Other than learning survey techniques I gained skills such as writing a literature review with several different sources and themes. I learned how to code qualitative data into themes that will help prove my research question, also I learned how to format that information into a power-point to present to representatives of one of the preschools that we partnered with.
This class has helped me prepare for future employment opportunities by allowing me to practice some of the soft skills that were practiced throughout this course. Some of these that I feel will be beneficial in a future career is patience and flexibility. With survey research, a huge part of the process is waiting on the responses and then properly inputting the data to be analyzed. With flexibility, there were moments when we had a plan in place but there were times when working with our community partners where we had to change it to benefit everyone. Teamwork was also a skill that was enhanced by taking this course, as a team we had to come up with survey questions and there had to be compromise for a successful survey to be made.
Since my career goals are to work in law enforcement having these soft skills is beneficial to this career. There are several instances of having to work in a team setting, this can be as simple as working with a partner or as complex as working with several different agencies. Along with teamwork patience is important when working with the community because there is no way of knowing what sort of situation someone will be responding to and having a strong foundation of teamwork and patience will help improve community relations.
Also, having the capability to write a survey is a skill that can benefit my future employment office. Surveys can be used in many ways one of which would be to analyze how community relations are with that department. Surveys are important because it allows a company to evaluate what the public feels they need, and the company can make changes based on the survey results. These are some skills that I have learned that I believe will help me in my future employment options.