Instructions:
This is an individual assignment. By the fourth week of the semester, identify an individual or
group of individuals with whom to implement a single-system intervention and evaluation. This
may be any individual or group in your life, not necessarily people with whom you are working
in a professional social-work capacity (this is particularly true if you are not practicing social
work currently). During the course of the semester, implement an intervention with this
individual or group to help change an identified behavior. This will involve identifying:
a target goal, which you will describe in the case plan;
the behavior(s) associated with the target goal that the proposed intervention is
attempting to change;
the intervention designed to help promote behavior change;
the measure(s) used to assess the desired behavior change; and
the means by which you will collect data about the change.
For example, your partner may want to lose weight or your friend may want to spend less money
or your family may wants to eat more healthy meals (these are target goals and behaviors).
Design an intervention with this person or group. Perhaps your partner will park in a more
distant parking lot at work to walk more or your friend may budget to spend $100 a week at the
grocery store (these are interventions). Perhaps your partner will wear a pedometer to measure
more walking. Steps walked is a measure of the behavior change, and the pedometer is the means
by which you are collecting the data on the behavior. Your friend may keep a spreadsheet
identifying her weekly food costs. Food costs in dollars is the measure of behavior change, and
the spreadsheet is the means of collecting the data on the behavior.
As you implement the intervention, write a paper documenting the planned change and the
results of the evaluation. Papers should be typed, double spaced, using 1-inch margins, 12 point
Times New Roman font. Title and reference pages are required. An abstract is not required.
Follow APA 6th Edition style guidelines. The paper (not including title and reference pages)
Draft.doc)
Follow the outline listed below in writing the paper. At a minimum, there should be a heading
for each of the items listed in the outline below.
I. Introduction (15 pts.)
a. Briefly – who is the case?
b. Briefly – what is the problem?
c. Briefly what did you do to address the problem?
II. Statement of the problem (35 pts)
a. Describe the case (individual or group), e.g. age, gender, work, marital status,
family, hobbies, skills, history, etc.
b. What is the goal?
c. What does he/she want to change?
d. Why?
*Think of this section like a case assessment provide a comprehensive description
of the individual/group that helps to contextualize the situation and explain why the
presenting issue is a problem and why the proposed change may work, particularly
now.
III. Literature Review (35 pts.)
a. What interventions have been done before with this issue?
b. What measures have been used to assess change for this behavior?
c. What about cultural competency are certain interventions and measures more
or less effective with specific groups, in particular in regards to your client?
IV. Research Question/Hypothesis (15 pts.)
a. What are you trying to answer, e.g., does CBT reduce anxiety for a single-mother
who is pursuing a graduate degree in social work while working full-time?
b. What do you hypothesize if you implement X treatment plan, e.g., CBT will reduce
anxiety for a single-mother who is pursuing a graduate degree in social work
while working full-time?
V. Methodology be very specific in this section detail exactly what you have done
(35 pts.)
a. What did you measure/what are the variables?
b. How did you measure the variables?
c. How/when did you collect the data?
*This section should provide enough detail that if I wanted to repeat the study, just by
reading your paper, I could do so exactly based on the information you provide. Spell
out every step you took in completing the evaluation from conceptualizing and
operationalizing the outcome measures to implementing the intervention to collecting
the data on the intervention to analyzing the outcome data. Be very detailed.
VI. Results (25 pts.)
a. What did you find? Numerical results should be reported here.
b. To what extent did the intervention work?
VII. Discussion (35 pts.)
a. Summarize the findings answer the research question or state whether the
results supported the hypothesis.
b. Try to explain why the intervention worked or did not work.
c. Discuss potential limitations that may have biased the results unreliable
outcome measure, threats to internal validity, etc.
d. Offer recommendations for others. What would you do differently next time? What
worked? What did not work?
Overall quality of the paper (25 pts.)
Appendix A: Assessments, descriptions of other information gathering devices, Excel time series
chart (15 pts.)
Technical Components APA, reference page, etc. (
