49 PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN RESEARCH DESIGNS Are participants randomly assigned to a treatment or control group, What procedures will be used to determine how many observations are enough to produce useful information! Who will analyze the data once it has been collected? What will be used to review research findings with key informants and stakeholders? process Case Application: Using Research to Evaluate an Emergency Response System For every city, emergency response is a serious business. Emergency response systems connect callers to police, fire, and emergency medical staff using a 9-1-1 emergency phone line. Abuses of the 9-1-1 system can create significant delays in emergency response and, unfortunately, some delays lead to the death of citizens (Deason-Howell and Berry , 2002; FEMA, 2017). While citizens should only use 9-1-1 for a life threaten- ing request for immediate help, some citizens use the emergency num- ber as a call for needed municipal services. Nonlife threatening events like roadway maintenance, lost pets, trash collection, graffiti removal, roaming animals, and fallen trees also cause serious community concern. When citizens report nonemergency concerns through the 9-1-1 emer- gency number, they overload emergency lines and slow down emergency and has part- response for assistance. More than twenty years ago, the city implemented a 3-1-1 system to improve emergency response time following a study that documented mis- use and abuse of the 9-1-1 system. The chief of communications managed calls for service through the city's enhanced emergency and nonemergency system. To justify the rising costs to support the 3-1-1 system, the chief wants to measure the impact of the enhanced call system nered with nearby university faculty to conduct a research study. The re- search team proposes to use a quasi-experimental approach, specifically a times-series design to evaluate the program and document the effectiveness of the current system. The following time-series quasi-experimental design depicts the proposed approach: 0 20 13 XO,00 10 0₂/00,0,0,0,0,0,0, The research team proposes that the city look at response time data col- lected before and after the 3-1-1 system was implemented. If the enhanced leth D 50 CHAPTER 4 system was effective, the research team suggests that emergency response time will decrease significantly on 011 and after. In this proposed design, X refers to the adoption of the new 3-1-1 system; O refers to observed emergency response time each year . The research team assures the chief of communications that this research design provides the best credible evi- dence to evaluate the impact of the enhanced system. What do you think? Discussion Questions • Does the chief of communications need a research design that de- scribes, explores, or explains? How can the research team improve the research design using a different quasi-experimental or experi- mental design? Have threats to internal and external validity been eliminated? • What resources should be devoted to the research project? Can the proposed research design describe the problem, discuss the impact of the program, or establish the effect of the 3-1-1 system on the emergency response system? When should the research begin? Are there specific time constraints associated with the research project based on the research proposal? Will the research team collect data now or collect data over time? • Where will the research take place? Does the research team need approval from an Institutional Review Board or a Human Subjects Review Board to conduct this research study? Will the data need to be secured to protect the confidentiality and anonymity of the research subjects? Why is the chief of communications conducting the research? How should he disseminate his research findings? Does this research de sign help him make decisions about the effectiveness or efficiency of the program? Given this design, how can he use the findings to make decisions about the impact of a program? Implications for Practice: Why Research Designs Matter In the field of public administration, Perry and Kraemer (1986) assere the "methodologies for administrative research, such as program evaluation client surveys, and productivity measurement, are focused on generating ha problems of particular organizations or programs" 188cssing the poli of do