EDCUR 809 Assignment 2

The prenatal fitness program that was open to the city’s general population of pregnant Aboriginal woman was run from March 1995 to March 1997. Since there is no data to determine if this program continued after 1997 a summative review such as Scriven’s summative review to evaluate the end of the program and to see if it was effective or if it has met its original goals would work well here.

The first step in this process would be to define the program. In this case the program is an exercise program that is targeted toward pregnant Aboriginal woman in Saskatoon Saskatchewan with the intent of reducing the incidences of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and Type II diabetes. The goal of the program is to prevent this demographic of high-risk pregnant woman from developing diabetes during their pregnancy.

Now that the program has been defined it is important to create a succinct purpose for this review. For this I would look to determine whether the program was effective for the participants, if it reached a large enough portion of the target population to create a substantial difference in the incidence of gestational or type II diabetes, as well as whether this program should increase to a larger percentage of the target population or if the program should grow to include non Aboriginal pregnant woman. This purpose would give a clear direction to the data that is to be collected.

The data collection would be both qualitative and quantitative in nature. The first process in collecting data for this review would be to gather and synthesize all the existing quantitative data on the program. This would include information such as, how many people participated, how many potential participants were there? How much exercise they offered, what was the average attendance for participants at the once a week sessions, and is there any information existing to prove whether the participants had a lower incidence of the two types of diabetes than other Aboriginal woman who did not partake in this program or follow any exercise program of their own. After this data is collected and synthesized I would try to contact a selection of the participants to do a follow up study to see if they had any more pregnancies, took part in exercise during them and if they had either form of diabetes during those pregnancies.

I would also try to conduct a focus group session to gather qualitative data from the original exercise program personnel and the woman who took part in the program. This review would gather their opinions on subjective topics such as location and frequency of the sessions, type of exercise offered, what was the reason they joined the group, what kept them going every week, what would make the program better, and so on.

With both of these types of data collected the last step would be to analyze all the information and present the findings to the stakeholders involved. This would give them a good understanding of how effective the program was toward the initial goal of lowering the incidence of Aboriginal pregnant woman developing diabetes. With these results a recommendation for the future potential or direction of this program would be made.

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