An agency responsible for promoting community resilience – the ability of people

Question

An agency responsible for promoting community resilience – the ability of people and property to
withstand and respond positively in the face of extreme events (for example, violence, a heat wave,
economic distress or rain-induced flooding) wants to learn if its local interventions have been
successful. It decides to construct a study in which a small number of low-income neighborhoods
with high levels of transience, environmental vulnerability and transit inaccessibility receive
resilience training and another number of similar neighborhoods do not. The focus of this study is on
community response to extreme weather events. Selected neighborhoods are observed over the
course of one year, during which there may be multiple extreme weather events that cause
property damage and human distress. The responses of the various neighborhoods are measured,
and the aggregate resilience of the neighborhoods who received the training is compared to that of
the neighborhoods that did not receive the training, both at the start of the study and at the end of
the study.
a. What term best describes the research design the agency has used? Why?
b. What is the primary independent variable?
c. What is the primary dependent variable?
d. Generally, how strong would you expect a study of this type to be according to the concept of
internal validity? Why?
e. Generally, how strong would you expect a study of this type to be according to the concept of
external validity? Why?
f. Describe one ethical concern a researcher might raise regarding the design used for this study.
g. Describe and justify your choice of a specific alternative study design that may have a lower
level of internal validity, a higher level of external validity but which is likely to address the
ethical concern(s) you identified in part (f).

Explanation / Answer

a). Observational study design - case-control study design

b). The aggregate resilience of the neighbourhoods

c). Community response to extreme weather events

d). There could be multiple confounding variablöes which could influence a neighbourhood's resilience not related to their income levels. It could due to govt. spending in those areas, incorrect sampling issues or other environmental factors like frequent bad weather due to its proximity to sea etc. Hence not particularly strong wrt internal validity.

e). Also, external validity here remains a problem since there could be pre-test effects present along with certain features of cases which might interact with the independent variables, limiting generalizability.

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