First the bad news - Somehow all my pictures from today deleted when my phone ran out of charge :( So no pictures for today unless I can miraculously find them stored somewhere.
Now on to the good news - I had a wonderful day :)
Today was an extremely productive day at work! Ann had appointments most of the day so we had a brief powow and came up with the list of things for me to do. Ann had picked up a nice bookshelf someone was throwing out so we hopped in her car and brought it here to my house. We also watered the garden and I collected mangoes that had fallen to put in the "please take these" area. Susan (my office mate) worked half a day today, she is out till Friday at a wedding on Maui. So my office was super quiet and I spent the day working on my project.
To understand what I did today I first need to describe the actual project I am here to work on. As stated early on I was awarded a position here in Hawaii with the Hawaii State Department of Health, Maternal and Child Health through the Graduate Student Internship Program (GSIP) funded by The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).
The project deals with developing a survey instrument for measuring prevalence of intimate partner violence and sexual violence here in Hawaii. Women are by far the greater number of victims of these types of violence though men are also victims. Understanding the distribution of this violence aids in developing prevention programs and interventions to reduce this violence. That is where my project comes in, in developing a survey instrument and a pilot test of that instrument to assist in finding this needed information. For information about my specific internship:
| Internship summary The Maternal Child Health Branch (MCHB) at the Hawaii State Department of Health is one of three Branches under the Family Health Services Division. The FHSD provides oversight for the Hawaii State Title V Maternal and Child Health Block Grant Program. The MCHB supports a continuum of prevention services available to children and families in the State of Hawaii. The MCHB collaborates with public and private agencies, and statewide initiatives to decrease barriers to service delivery and ensure that the services provided are accessible, culturally and linguistically appropriate and responsive to community needs. The MCHB also administers a statewide system of services to reduce health disparities for women, children, and families of Hawaii. |
| Purpose This internship is designed to assist in building the capacity of the MCHB in development of an updated prevalence/victimization survey related to all violence topics. Current data are limited to programs statistics, police or other criminal statistics and extreme cases (deaths or hospitalizations and ER visits). The last prevalence study on violence (specific to sexual assault reporting) was conducted in 2000. |
| Goals A useable survey questionnaire on domestic violence, intimate partner violence and sexual assault designed to assess prevalence of victimization among Hawaii's diverse women. This survey will be designed in different formats for (1) a landline and cell phone survey (2) an online survey and (3) a survey for use with program/service clients. |
| Objectives The objective is to provide updated and accurate population -based prevalence data on the extent of the problem of violence in all it's forms among women in Hawaii. The results will be compared with what is known in the systems and program based statistics. |
| Data or analytic tasks and activities involved Literature review on available population based violence survey methdology and questionnaires as well as design and piloting of the survey with service/program clients and as an online survey. |
So, what does this mean to the everyday person? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) results earlier this year. The project will be based off of this survey. The data for Hawaii is not available because the sample size was too small in most categories. Therefore they want to conduct their own survey here to get the data. The overall project will include 4 main parts: 1)Survey development, 2)Phase I-a pilot to test the survey instrument and gather preliminary data, 3)Phase II-full implementation of the survey instrument to gather data for analysis, and 4) Analysis and reporting of the results.
My job is broken into several parts:
1) Preliminary project design and planning - laying out the scope of the project, a reasonable timeline, and goals to be accomplished. This includes getting the actual NISVS from the CDC.
2) IRB development and submission - The IRB is the Institutional Review Board. The IRB reviews research proposals to ensure they meet ethical guidelines and cause no harm to participants. Rob - no IRB does NOT stand for "I Rake Bears" although it does seem that way sometimes. :) Phase I will be conducted solely among University of Hawaii students, faculty and staff. Phase II will include this group and others. Therefore, I have to write and submit IRB requests to both the University of Hawaii and the Hawaii State Department of Health.
3) Survey development - based on the NISVS a new survey instrument will be developed utilizing questions from the NISVS and others culturally appropriate for the complicated population of Hawaii. A LOT of reading of research and learning about the different nationalities and cultures in Hawaii make this extremely challenging. For example, the State Department of Health has to translate forms into 16 languages/dialects to address the mixture of Japanese, Chinese, Fillipino, Hawaiian, American, and each dialect of the Polynesian islands. The mixtures of nationalities and cultures is immense. Determining how to address questions on this delicate subject in a culturally sensitive manner is challenging. I am fortunate to have the NISVS as a basis to work from. Overall, we believe that the majority of the survey will come from the NISVS with some questions omitted and only a few newly developed questions. The survey will then be prepared for online distribution by entering the survey into Survey Monkey.
4) Phase I implementation - recruitment of University of Hawaii students, faculty and staff via social media and electronic invitation.
5) Analysis of Phase I - the survey tool itself will be analyzed and changes made as necessary. In addition, a database will be developed to facilitate data compilation. Also further data analysis of this Phase I pilot data to compare university responses versus other populations later will occur.
Due to time constraints I will be responsible for 1-3 but if time allows I will also work on 4-5.
So for now I am working on parts 1 and 2. The prelim work is going well, I am waiting on the CDC getting the NISVS to us. Hopefully within a couple of weeks. They have responded that they are working on getting it to us. I'll know more on this next week. Today I did a lot of work on the IRB proposals.This is really challenging because we have to know specifics of the project to include int he IRB, which we have been working on developing last week and this week.
For lunch I went to the Kapiolani Community College cafeteria again and had a wonderful BBQ chicken quesadilla with grilled veggies, spanish rice and pico de gallo and guacamole on the side. I normally dislike guacamole but here it tastes light and fresh - what I imagine green would taste like :) It was super delicious. KCC has a culinary program and the cafeteria food is all prepared by the chefs and future chefs and served by them. This means it is sometimes a bit slow but VERY VERY yummy food. I sat out on the lanai and enjoyed a gorgeous ocean view and lovely breeze while I ate.
For the afternoon I worked more on the IRB proposal. I also put together my first deliverable for my GSIP requirements. The first deliverable is a Detailed Work Report giving basically the information I just listed above in greater detail. In other words, what I'm doing while I am here. Again, I couldn't do this until we had determined a lot off the prelim work on the project. On my way out the door I chatted for a bit with the new division chief who officially takes over tomorrow. Nice conversation.
At home I chatted a bit with folks from home then went downstairs to cook. I started the black bean soup that Rob and Alex sent ingredients for in the care package. I also braved trying out the rice cooker. While things cooked I helped Nikki reorganize the kitchen area for us upstairs folks including moving the new shelf in to replace a broken one whose shelves were being held up by the toaster and a bottle of ketchup. I finished cooking and divided up the soup into storage containers and the rice into ziplocs. This will be perfect to take to work for lunches the next couple of days. i am still full from lunch so I didn't eat any tonight.
I tried the soup - HOLY COW. Rob and Alex sent a baggie of seasonings to add. Apparently they like it MUCH SPICIER than I usually make mine. Thank goodness for the rice to have it over and hopefully mellow out the "Melt Your Eyeballs" spiciness level. I'll be sure to keep a big bottle of water handy for lunch!
I cleaned up my dishes, got everything put away upstairs in the fridge, showered and am now ready to put on a movie and get some sleep. I am thinking maybe the old 1959 version of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" with Pat Boone. Should be a nice old movie to relax and wind down with.
Aloha ahiahi ia oukou, (Good evening to all of you)
~Melissa
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