Psychology 2990A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Logic Model, Treatment And Control Groups, Racial Profiling
3 Oct 2019
School
Department
Course
Professor
Intervention and evaluation
Sunday, September 8, 2019
8:04 PM
Interventions
• A strategy intended to influence the behaviour of people for the purpose of improving their
functioning with respect to some social or practical problem
• Some focus on attitudes/knowledge, but ultimate goal of trying to influence someone's behaviour
• Two types of interventions
o Personal (individual)
• Ex. HIMYM convince Marshall to take his hat off, robin to get over Barney
o Programmatic
• More of a focus in this course
• Intervention: 4 main steps
o 1: identifying a problem: needs assessment
• Ex. Texting and driving
▪ Common, research wants to know the % of car accidents caused by texting
driver
• Stakeholders: individuals who have a vested interest in outcome of an intervention
▪ Need to identify these
▪ Includes people in intervention, those who are researching/funding etc.
o 2: arriving at a solution
• Precipitating factors (cause of problem)
▪ Distinguish what are known as precipitating (root cause) and perpetuating
factors (factors that sustain the problem)
▪ Precipitating factors of texting and driving: apps that make you want to
constantly check, even while driving
▪ Perpetuating factors of texting and driving: if everyone does it, its not that big of
a deal
o 3: setting goals and designing the intervention
• Objective: short term outcomes
• Goals: long term outcomes
• Program logic model: an explanation of how the program activities lead to the
attainment of the program objectives (and goals)
• Should be based on a theoretical rationale
o 4: implementation/evaluation
• Process evaluation: has program reached the intended recipients?
• Outcome evaluation: has program met its objectives and goals?
Intervention designs
• Interrupted time-series designs
o Quasi-experimental research
• Don’t involve assigning people to different groups, studying pre-existing groups
o Effect of IV assessed by comparing multiple observations of the same group of individuals
o Ex. O1, O2, O3 treatments: 04, 05, 06
• O= observation
o Ex. 0=0 volume of recycled materials; treatment =intervention to increase recycling
• Non-equivalent control group designs
o Treatment group compared with a non-equivalent control group
