A Qualitative Study of Long-Term Retention of Midwestern Child Welfare Workers
Presenter Status
Graduate Student
Session
F-2
Location
Buller Room 208
Start Date
15-5-2015 2:25 PM
End Date
15-5-2015 2:50 PM
Presentation Abstract
Child welfare organizations across the United States suffer from high turnover rates with the average staff turnover being two years (U.S. General Accounting Office, 2003). The factors that contribute to long-term retention of child welfare workers are not well understood. In this presentation, I apply an organizational climate and culture theoretical framework to explain this phenomenon. I then propose a phenomenological study to more clearly understand the factors that support retention of child welfare workers for five years or more. In phenomenological research, a smaller sample size of 5 to 25 cases is considered acceptable to obtain adequate data to describe the shared experience (Moustakas, 1994; Polkinghorne, as cited in Creswell, 2013). The sampling strategy used in this study will be purposive snowball sampling to locate 10 Midwestern child welfare workers who have a minimum of five years of experience. To address validity, researcher bias will be described. In-person interviews will be conducted using a phenomenological approach. Data will be transcribed and analyzed using QSR NVivo. A codebook will be developed and content analysis will be used to discover major and minor themes. In conclusion, I discuss how the findings of this study will be used to improve the retention of child welfare workers.
A Qualitative Study of Long-Term Retention of Midwestern Child Welfare Workers
Buller Room 208
Child welfare organizations across the United States suffer from high turnover rates with the average staff turnover being two years (U.S. General Accounting Office, 2003). The factors that contribute to long-term retention of child welfare workers are not well understood. In this presentation, I apply an organizational climate and culture theoretical framework to explain this phenomenon. I then propose a phenomenological study to more clearly understand the factors that support retention of child welfare workers for five years or more. In phenomenological research, a smaller sample size of 5 to 25 cases is considered acceptable to obtain adequate data to describe the shared experience (Moustakas, 1994; Polkinghorne, as cited in Creswell, 2013). The sampling strategy used in this study will be purposive snowball sampling to locate 10 Midwestern child welfare workers who have a minimum of five years of experience. To address validity, researcher bias will be described. In-person interviews will be conducted using a phenomenological approach. Data will be transcribed and analyzed using QSR NVivo. A codebook will be developed and content analysis will be used to discover major and minor themes. In conclusion, I discuss how the findings of this study will be used to improve the retention of child welfare workers.