Part I

The treatment of substance abuse is one of the most complicated behaviors to bring about effective and lasting change. The author states in Chapter 15: “Failure to identify the contributing and resulting connections between substance abuse and the client’s presenting problems with health, the law, money, work, school, society, family, and self will spell a decisive failure in care, however well packaged the plan and well intentioned the delivery”. Should human service professionals be required to have additional certification in the treatment of this population? Why or why not? Support your discussion with a minimum of one scholarly, peer-reviewed source that was published within the last five years and cited according to APA guidelines.

Part II

Imagine you are asked to give a half-hour presentation about research in human services. Since this could cover a vast number of concepts, you decide to illustrate the steps of a basic research process using a real-world example from your text. You may select from any of the “Research in Practice” sections of your textbook for a real-world example. In your discussion, state the steps of the research process and propose a fictitious, yet practical, conclusion. If you cannot come up with a conclusion from your real-world example, you may locate and cite a research conclusion from a published article. Explain how this research conclusion could be used to inform human service practice with regards to the problem formulation you selected.

Part III

Often when providing services, basic intake information is required. The researcher could, at the end of a given time period, examine these intake papers and, based on some need, compute descriptive statistics using information provided by the clients / participants. Information such as income, family make up, and education levels could be used to compute mean values. However, you may be asked to configure a study that can be called experimental. In this discussion forum you are asked to compare these two formats and identify in what ways they differ. In order to determine definitions of descriptive research, you will need to access Introduction to statistics, variables, scares of measurement (Links to an external site.), Excel 2010 statistics 14: Descriptive & inferential statistics (Links to an external site.), Basic research concepts (Links to an external site.), and The Office of Research Integrity (Links to an external site.). Your post should focus on differentiating these two research types and then discuss their potential contribution to research in health and human services.