Rhonna Robinson
Preliminary Proposal -ddw's comments are in red text

A Needs Assessment for Diabetes Education
            A complete literature review of diabetes education would reveal that the follow are important objectives for diabetes education.
a)      Understandings of basic disease functioning
b)      Adequate information provided about

·        diet
·        medication
·        exercise

c)      acute complications
These are good objectives and just remember to substantiate them in the literature when you actually write this up.

                  The twenty-five parents of newly diagnosed patients, birth to fourteen, with diabetes, will be given a questionnaire pre and post education. Pre will be during the initial hospital admission at time of diagnosis. The post will be given one month after discharge at their first endocrinologist appointment. If both parents are present, both will be given the questionnaire pre and post. If parents are not available to complete both questionnaires, their results will not be used. The questionnaire will consist of questions based on the above criteria.
This is all fine as an idea - you will likely refine it, but I like the idea of waiting a month after discharge for the post-exam questions.

You do need to rethink the questionnaire. It has been my experience that if you ask people whether or not they feel confident about something, you are never sure what they think you mean - thus you can't be sure what their responses mean. More below.

The questionnaire will be multiple choice and each question will have four possible answers.
a)      I feel confident I would know what do
b)      I don’t feel confident I would know what to do
c)      I have no idea what to do
Or
a) I fully understand
b) I sometimes understand
d) I don’t always understand
e) I have no idea
( Are of these better or should I use just a,b,c,d answers to questions. Like choose the correct answer to see what they now or how much. Which is more adequate or appropriate? )

That's it exactly - what did they actually learn from the educational experience. You probably will design this teaching experience around your three objectives and give many, many points of information.   In doing this, you might think about emphasizing 4-5 really important things for each objective (more if you feel there are more). Each of the 4-5 important points, that you drive home in the educational setting should be in your questionnaire.

So you'd have 3 objectives times 5 questions - 15 questions total. It would be like a multiple choice-true/false test and you'd be able to see, in the pretest what they already know, and by subtracting their scores from those on the posttest, you'll be able to assess how effective your class has been for them.

In evaluation, these data will also show you where to improve the course, change it , to be even more effective.

            After the parents of twenty-five children have completed the pre and posttests, the results will be calculated using a t-test, thus, comparing each area of the program pre and post and will assess the information learned by the participants. Right

So what else to I need to do? Background info on questions for questionnaire? Do I need to actually write the questionnaire? Proof of my three objectives for education?
Sometime between now and before you put this proposal to a committee, or use it in your comprehesive exam, you'd need to develop the questionnaire. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to have enough relevance to get your readers/committee to see the value and give you further advice.
And if you are using this idea in your comprehensive exam, you'd need to have some citations from the literature to justify the three objectives, and the tests for effectiveness (the questions in the questionnaire).
http://www.diabetes.org/home.jsp- Diabetes Assoc.
            http://www.joslin.org/index.asp- Joslin Diabetes Center
            http://www.jdrf.org/index.cfm?page_id=103438- Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
            Books:
            Plotnick, L, & Henderson, R. (1998). Clinical management of the child and teenager with          diabetes. Baltimore; John Hopkins University Press.
Akron Children’s is a recognized Diabetes Ed program according to the American Diabetes Assoc.

Sponsoring Organization:	Children's Hospital Medical Center of Akron
Site/Program Name:	Diabetes Self-Management Education Program
Address:	One Perkins Square
City, State, Zip:	Akron, OH, 44308
Phone:	330-543-3208
Program ID:	004748