GSIF Blog Post February 28 2020

  1. Our IRB Strategy 

 

Our team has been working over the last several weeks to prepare to begin the writing of our IRB as it goes hand in hand with our research. Our team has delegated tasks into smaller teams and individuals while keeping some tasks as a group initiative. Below is our bulleted breakdown. 

 

Person Responsible            Task
Everyone
  • Develop research questions
  • Develop a hypothesis 
  • Determine our systematic method on how we will protect and safeguard privacy. 
  • Develop a coding technique and determine how data will be stored. 
  • Examine other diagnostic tools and develop our possible screener questions
Dr. Morin
  • obtain the letters of support that show we are welcome and allowed to be there
    • Sierra Leone Autistic Society
Alyssa
  • Primarily writing the IRB
  • Write the basis for why our team needs to be approved for a waiver of written consent based on culture and tradition 
  • We will shape it as a “pilot study” per Matt from IRB 
Kathleen
  • Collect psychometrics from other screeners
  • Collect reliability data for the questions that are very similar to one from another screener to help show that we are not starting from complete scratch and show we did the legwork to create the questions
  • We need to submit all possible questions
Emily
  • Develop questions for focus groups
  • Develop questions for interviews 
Grace
  • Help with verbal consent forms and all questions to check for cultural appropriateness
  • Help with building the basis for why written consent is not feasible 
Lindsey
  • Help with creating our teacher training with her background on Sierra Leone’s structure of health care and education system

 

  1. Develop an outline for your mid-semester presentations. What supporting evidence will you provide for each point? How will you boost your credibility every step of the way?

 

We have continued to delegate our tasks for the presentation so that we can work effectively. We plan to only have 2 people from our team present during the 5 minutes and then the rest of us will help answer questions during the Q&A. Our main presenters during the 5-minute portion of our presentation will be Emily and Grace. 

 

  • Logo
  • Goal: All children in Sierra Leone screened by the age of 4
  • Macro:
    • Amount of research done in US/western worlds
      • Part of the literature and needs section of the presentation
    • Level of knowledge about autism in general community (if we can find literature that speaks to this)
    • In comparison, research in sub-saharan Africa and specifically Sierra Leone
    • Lack of available culturally appropriate screeners/diagnostic tools
  • Mirco:
    • How does this impact the children and families?
    • Cultural beliefs of causes of autism
    • Shunning
    • Giving the child back to god
    • Possible loss of income
  • Evidence of people wanting our help
    • Sierra Leone Autistic Society
    • Dedicated to outreach → AAC device donation
    • Psychiatrists and teachers asking for help when Dr. Morin visited in January
  • We plan to talk about how our project is credible because of the support of the Sierra Leone Autistic Society and the other schools who have already written letters of support for us, along with helping us to review our screener and questions.
  • We didn’t inherit anything as this is a new project so we will not have to address this portion. 
  • We will discuss our approach and mixed methods approach to complete our project
  • We will make sure to emphasize our approach for making a systemic change rather than simply introducing our product and leaving things there – incl. plans to train both community health workers, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens
  • We will address our competition/ challenges by explaining cultural beliefs and divides, and how they can cause disturbances along the path towards realizing our goal
  • We will compile work we have done throughout the semester across various topics, in order to support our project’s progress

One thought on “GSIF Blog Post February 28 2020”

  1. Your detailed IRB plan looks great. For your presentation, be sure you are emphasizing the main issue you are addressing – I might not talk about amount of research done so early, since I think research is more a cause/underlying factor in the issue you care about, (diagnosis/perception of people with autism) which I would put first. (You would know better than me though if it makes more sense the way you have it.) You also have in your outline “we plan to” in a few places, which you should avoid in your actual presentation in favor of “we will” instead. Otherwise, just make sure you include as much evidence/as many facts as you can to strengthen each point in your presentation, and good luck!

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