Research Memo

Foster Care

                           Foster care has been around since 1952 (Adoption Media LLC). With the youth that enter foster care, statistics follow. My hypothesis is, “how does growing up in foster care affect a student’s ability to perform academically and socially verses growing up in a typical home?”  Will the statistics change or stay the same? In my own opinion, growing up in foster care will affect a student’s ability to perform well in school. It can also affect you physically, mentally and emotionally. The goal of my survey is to test the general knowledge that people have about foster care system and how this system can influence a child’s life.

                           Numbers, graphs, and labels are representations of statistics to show your progress and failures. My targeted audience was teens and young adults from the ages of 14- 21. I included the ages of 19 to 21 because, from the time you enter into foster care, the age limit allowed to stay is 21. My results are reliable; however, I decided to change some questions so that my survey questions corresponded with my research topic question. Most the questions only tested the knowledge on foster care instead of focus on the way it makes the youth feel. I felt that my survey received answers that were okay, but I did not feel my survey was complete with the little information I had.

                           My data was difficult to analzye because my questions did not quite pertain to what I was asking. However, in my data I found out that everyone I surveyed knows or is related to someone in foster care. One person out of the participants I surveyed is in foster care. I was shocked to see that most people who took the survey felt that foster care was an important issue, but when the opened ended question was asked, most answers were “I don’t know.”   I still plan to use some of the results from my old survey and include it in the data for the new survey. I have created another survey to help answer my research topic. The data from the new survey was very helpful; the trend that has proven my hypothesis is of the 25 participants, all of them stated that “moving from home to home or being in foster care has a mental, social, physical, or emotional toll on the youth.”  I also noticed that over half of the participants voted that most girls in foster care will end up pregnant and drop out of school. It surprised me to see that the results for males in foster care fell very short of the votes girls received. I received most of the same results for the question that asked, “what would you pack if you were forced to move out of your home in a couple of hours.”  The data from my new survey and old survey allowed me to see where my participants knowledge and feelings on foster care. Creating the foster care survey help shed some very helpful information that my original survey was lacking. The surveys made my hypothesis question easier to answer and provided a great load of insight.

                           I can honestly say that my hypothesis was supported because all of the results for my data concluded that all participants believed that foster care has some kind of effect on the youth. The effect is more negative than positive because of how the youth feels after being placed with a different home and a new family. It was more disappointing to know that most of my participants for the original survey, answered I do not know on the open ended question. When you say you feel strong about something, but you do not have an idea about how to help or contribute  possible solutions, then it shows you do not really know much about the issue. In my brand new survey, however, all participants but one answered the open ended question. Based on my data, it does conclude that being in a foster home can affect a students ablity to perform academically and socially well in school. I plan to keep researching more about my topic. There are still unanswered questions as to why out of the 50% that graduate high school, only one to two percent graduate from college with a degree. I also plan to research more about what DSS is planning for our youth in foster care.