Women Delivering Live Births Research Paper

Describe the survey content, and method. You are pretending that you are the investigator who designed and researched the topic. Justify your reasoning, why would you choose that method? Would you have chosen a different style? Use the outline below to help you write your paper. Clearly indicate sections of the paper by using headings that indicate where particular kinds of information can be found. Subheading may also be used in longer sections to facilitate organization.

• Introduction
  • Explain the issue you are examining and why it is significant.
  • Describe the general area being studied
• Background/ Review of the Literature
  • A description of what is already known about this area of study.
  • Summarize what is already known about the topic. Include a summary of the basic background information on the topic gleaned from your literature review.
  • Specify the research objective you are pursuing in your research. What is your main research question/objective?
• Rationale
  • List the specific question(s) that you are exploring.
    • Explain how these research questions are related to the larger issues raised in the introduction.
  • Explain how your project will help you with your project. What is that you are trying to understand? How you are going to use your collected information? Is there a program or project that the will benefit from your research?
• Method and Design
  • Method: how you collected the data and why?
    • Describe the Sampling Method chosen.
    • Why is the method the best option?
    • Who is your Target Population?
      • Give some demographic information: age, language, socio-economic information, other information.
  • How are you collecting the information? What is the method you are using? Face-to-face Interview? Telephone calls? Web?
  • What are you measuring? What questions are important from your survey?
  • Results
    • Provide preliminary information. Descriptive statistics.
• Conclusion
  • Discuss, in general, how your research would lead to a significant improvement over the original studies, and/or how it would benefit the field. (In other words, why should someone care? If you were applying for money to do this, why would someone fund you? If you wanted to publish your results, why would they be interesting?)

5-7 pages

Size: 12

Washington, DC, Metropolitan Area Drug Study (DC*MADS), 1991: Homeless and Transient Population

Principal Investigator(s): United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Drug Abuse

Summary: The DC Metropolitan Area Drug Study (DC*MADS) was conducted in 1991, and included special analyses of homeless and transient populations and of women delivering live births in the DC hospitals. DC*MADS was undertaken to assess the full extent of the drug problem in one metropolitan area. The study was comprised of 16 separate studies that focused on different sub-groups, many of which are typically not included or are underrepresented in household surveys.

The Homeless and Transient Population study examines the prevalence of illicit drug, alcohol, and tobacco use among members of the homeless and transient population aged 12 and older in the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Statistical Area (DC MSA). The sample frame included respondents from shelters, soup kitchens and food banks, major cluster encampments, and literally homeless people. Data from the questionnaires include history of homelessness, living arrangements and population movement, tobacco, drug, and alcohol use, consequences of use, treatment history, illegal behavior and arrest, emergency room treatment and hospital stays, physical and mental health, pregnancy, insurance, employment and finances, and demographics. Drug specific data include age at first use, route of administration, needle use, withdrawal symptoms, polysubstance use, and perceived risk.

Time Period: 1991

Date of Collection: 1991-01–1991-06

Unit of Observation: individual

Universe: Persons aged 12 and older in the DC MSA who were either literally homeless or at imminent risk of becoming homeless, including persons who spent the previous night in an emergency shelter, in a nondomicile (e.g., vacant building, city park, car, or on the street) or who were using soup kitchens or emergency food banks.

Sample: The Homeless and Transient Population study consisted of 908 interviews from four overlapping sampling frames: 477 interviews with residents in 93 shelters, 224 interviews with patrons of 31 soup kitchens and food banks, 143 interviews with “literally homeless” people from 18 major cluster encampments, and 64 interviews with literally homeless people from an area probability sample of 432 census blocks in the MSA. People who were cognitively impaired and could not complete the interview were excluded from the survey. Impairment was defined as extreme intoxification or scoring more than nine on the Short Blessed Exam (Katzman, Brown, Fuld, Peck, Schecter, and Schimmel, 1983).

Data Source: personal interviews

Response Rates: The institutional response rate (i.e., for shelters and soup kitchens) was 82.6 percent. The individual interview response rate was 86.1 percent. The overall response rate was 71 percent.