Reference no: EM132269484

Discussion Question: Your task this week is to find one or more case studies that illustrates a personal example of the social problem you will be investigating for your Applied Research Project. Case studies, used in a clinical sense, are an in depth method for collecting data on one individual in a particular population. For this assignment, you should search the Internet for personal stories related to your topic of interest. This task might require some searching, but the Internet is full of personal stories. (Let me know if you have any trouble finding something.) Feel free to use news stories, personal blogs, or any other site that gives an insider's perspective to your population of interest. You may also use YouTube as a source for case studies. For example, if you choose breastfeeding mothers, you could use this site as a case study: breastfeeding-problems.com. If you have a personal connection to someone in your population of interest and would like to use their specific experiences as your case study, you are more than welcome to do so. You can choose several shorter case studies or one longer case study for your post.

It's important that you find a case study that is actually a first person narrative, not an analytical article talking about your population of interest.

In your post:

• First, give the link and summarize the case study in a paragraph. (Please do not copy and paste the case study into your post.)

• Second, based on the personal story, think through some of the policy implications for this particular situation. For example, in the case of breastfeeding mothers how could health care policy provide better supports? What about employment policies? (Don't worry about what the specific policies have to say about this point. Just brainstorm based on your case study.)

The purpose of this post is to give you a real world application for your Applied Final Project.

When writing your posts, it is very important that you focus not just on summary but also on analysis. These posts are how I determine your mastery of the material and your critical thinking. Remember:

• Make sure you start your initial post as a New Thread in the LEO Discussion board, or I might not find it when I grade.

• Your first paragraph needs to be an introduction to your post.

• Your final paragraph should be a conclusion which pulls your ideas together.

• Your middle paragraphs should discuss your arguments.

• All posts need to be written in APA style and cite resources. You are encouraged to draw on resources from your courses across your entire major. There is not a lot of new information learned in this course, as I want to see you bringing together all of what you have learned at UMUC.

• Please check your post against the Guide for Good Writing before you submit it, as points will be deducted if you make those common writing errors. (This document is located in the Writing Resources module.)

Please respond to at least 2 of your classmates' answers by providing them with comments, feedback and asking them compelling questions about their postings. (You are in no way limited to two response posts. The more engaged you can be on the discussion boards, the better.) To receive credit for your response posts, they should be at least one paragraph in length. Referencing empirical sources is strongly encouraged in your response posts as well as your initial post.