Determining a Sampling Strategy and Measurement Plan-Peer response

Respond to at least one of your peers. Your responses are expected to be substantive in nature and reference the assigned readings, as well as other theoretical, empirical, or professional literature to support your views and writings. Your response needs to be supported with at least two references.

The Center for troubled Teens was developed to help adolescent from the age of 13 to 18. Unfortunately, there are so many adolescents that are depressed, and so much to the point they are causing self-harm and even suicide. This program is to help adolescents through this time in their life and help them learn that their life is important and that they are loved. There are several programs offered here to help with their depression; dance classes, kick boxing class, and counseling both individual and group. Cognitive behavior therapy is a type of therapy that can help adolescents who act in self-harm when it is looked at from the depression stand point. After the adolescent is no longer in danger they will move to dialectical behavior therapy along with a few other behavioral interventions.

The type of sample I would want to do is purposeful samples, this has certain characteristics (Royse, Thyer & Padgett, 2016). For my group, I would want to focus on adolescents that have depression and self-harm. I want to understand why and how the adolescents become so depressed that they have the need to harm themselves. If there is something going on that is affecting so many students or if it is personal situations that is causing this depression and behavior. The participants will already be going to this program; out of the individuals there, the ones that have in the past or still does cause self-harm will be used for this experiment (Royse, Thyer & Padgett, 2016).

The diagnostic interview for children and adolescents-revised (DICA-R), will be used. This test is done on adolescent between 7 and 17 years of age. In this interview, the counselor will use “the involvement of a number of different informants, the use of various techniques; and that it should take into account the subject’s level of development and obtain information concerning the cognitive ability of the child” (Perez & Ascaso, 1998; 963). The most recent reliability studies have therefore attempted to determine the specific contribution of individual variables such as age and even gender. This test is more reliable if it is done by controlling age, cognitive ability, gender, the children were less reliable as informants when they were asked to compare their behavior with that of another child or about the reasoning about their own thoughts (Perez & Ascaso, 1998). The parents are the most stable informants on what their child is doing, how they are behaving, how they are reacting; at least with what they can see (Perez & Ascaso, 1998).

Perez, R. G., & Ascaso, L. E. (1998). Characteristics of the subject and interview influencing the test-retest reliability of the diagnostic interview for children and adolescents-revised. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry & Allied Disciplines, 39(7), 963-972.

Royse, D., Thyer, B. A., & Padgett, D. K. (2016). Program evaluation: An introduction to an evidence-based approach (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning