Effectiveness of Different Models of Social Care Contact Centers - Research Paper Example

EVALUATION ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF DIFFERENT MODELS OF SOCIAL CARE CONTACT CENTRES THAT PROVIDE TELEPHONE ACCESS Part - A Area of research This research concerns the social care services in United Kingdom through social service contact centres. The National Health Services (NHS), is the prime body that takes care of the major health and social service activities in UK. The social care services of the NHS are supported by the local authorities and third party health care organizations, says the official website of NHS (http://www.ic.nhs.uk/social-care ) . These social care services ensure not only the effectiveness of the social care information but also the timely and relevant information. They act as a single point of communication for the local authorities and other social service bodies. These local social service centres act as the immediate reach for the local people. The aim of these social service contact centres are to provide easy and quick access to the information about the services of NHS. The information from these contact centres can be utilized by anyone for self or for another person. The prominent social service contact centres in UK include the county councils. These are readily accessible through web sites or telephones. These contact centres provide information related to services concerning old people, services related to children, disabled persons and families. The mental health services, welfare benefits, emergency duty team facilities, details of carers are some of the other information given by these contact centres. Part - B The effectiveness of the services of these contact centres depends on the factors like the effective communication between the contact employees and the contacting people, the accuracy of the information provided to the contacting person, the range of services provided by the contact centre and many others. In order to know the effectiveness of the social care contact centres some social science research methodology has to be used. The social science research methodologies: The most common social science research methodologies or communication research methodologies are the Qualitative methodology and the Quantitative methodology. Guba & Lincoln (2005), says that the qualitative research method follows the interpretative paradigm of knowledge and the quantitative research principles are governed by the positivists paradigm of knowledge. The third paradigm, called as the critical paradigm uses both the qualitative and quantitative principles and is called as the mixed methodology. This usage of both the methods has the advantage that the reliability and the validity of the data collection and the analysis are good. The main characteristics of the qualitative methodology explained by Martin W. Bauer and George Gaskell ( 2000 ) are that this method is based on inductive reasoning and tries to understand the reality in the natural setting. The data is collected through structured or semi-structured interview (research instrument) and are non numeric (mostly text) in nature. This text data demands analysis in terms of guidelines rather than formulae. The prominent methods of data analysis include that of semiotic analysis, linguistic analysis, discourse analysis and conversation analysis. The results cannot be easily generalized. Another social science researcher, Roger D. Wimmer and Joseph R. Dominick (2003) say that the quantitative research methodology seems more accurate as it is based on a statistically valid set of people called as the focus group. The choice of this sample space is based on probabilistic calculations. The research instrument for quantitative method involves a structured survey questionnaire and a defined set of numerical responses. The data collected are in the form of numbers that could be interpreted and analyzed statistically. The statistical measures like mean, correlation, ANOVA, etc can be used to analyze the data. Thus this quantitative method is more complex and involves mathematical procedures. As each of these methods have their inherent merits and demerits, a combination of both these methods would provide a better research. The Priority Sequence Model: Morgan (1998) has proposed that understanding the differences between the qualitative and the quantitative methods is essential. This understanding enables to combine both the methods under a clear framework. The work of Morgan, called as the priority sequence model concentrates on the complementary needs of both the methods. Though a properly selected single method would be sufficient for any research projects, multiple methods may improve the research outcome. To combine the methods some sort of priority decision has to be made among the qualitative and quantitative methods. According to Mervyn S. Jackson & Diane Mead Niblo, ( 1999), “the first research-design decision is to determine priority. That is, the researcher must decide which approach (qualitative or quantitative) will be the principal data collection method. This is decided upon by selecting the data collection method which has the strengths that are most important to the project’s goals. Then, the researcher selects a contrasting complementary method which offers a set of strengths that can add to the research design’s overall ability to meet the project’s goals. The second research design decision is to determine the order or sequence of the two methods. That is, the researcher must decide how to connect the different methods to maximise their contributions to the success of the overall project.” This decision needs to be based on the aim of the project. If the research work aims to increase the effectiveness of the data collection of the main method, then the other method has to be conducted first , followed by the main method. If the research aims to maximise the value of the data collection, then the main method of research has to be conducted first followed by the complementary method. Mervyn S. Jackson & Diane Mead Niblo, (1999) categorises this sequencing of Morgan as follows “ This two step decision-making process leads to four major research designs: 1. qual-QUANT - smaller qualitative study helps guide the formation of questions in the larger (principal) quantitative data collection 2. quant-QUAL - smaller quantitative study helps determine sites for more extensive qualitative data collection 3. QUANT- qual - in-depth interviews help explain poorly understood quantitative results 4. QUAL-quant - small quantitative survey helps generalise results from a large qualitative survey”. The Research Instruments: As this research aims to analyse the Effectiveness of the social care contact centres with telephone access, the first research method would be the Quantitative study, that would help in forming the more detailed qualitative study. Thus the first research instrument for this research has to be a quantitative interview questionnaire and based on this study the detailed qualitative questionnaire has to be framed. The quantitative questions generally have defined options as answers. The respondents choose one of these pre defined options. This limits the wide sense of the response to the question. Whereas, the quantitative questionnaire gives the respondent to express his/her full view. A few quantitative questions are , how do you rate the services of the social care contact centres? What is the range of social care service information provided by the contact centre? and the like. It can be noted that all these types of questions can have the options on likert scale (numerical scale) as excellent(4), good(3), moderate(2) and bad(1). The qualitative questionnaire has questions that may have descriptive answers and thus cannot be categorised. These qualitative questions help to narrow down the quantitative survey questions according to the research requirements. The questions may be related to how did you contact the social care contact centre? Whom or what specific service you wanted to enquire about? From where did you get the contact details of the social care contact centre? What type of detail you needed? These are few questions that help to narrow down on the service effectiveness of the social care contact centres. These questions have been attached in Appendix A. The Pilot work: The pilot survey is generally conducted among close respondents who have experienced the services of the social care contact centres. A few of the people’s feedback form these social care contact centres can be useful. A more useful approach will be to contact the people in person to conduct the interview either in person or over telephone. For this research 10 people who had registered with / given feedback in the county council’s social care contact centres had been contacted and their opinion were collected. Data Interpretation : The data collected by the qualitative interview are interpreted according to their themes and the interpreted data has to be analysed by the framework approach. FRAMEWORK analysis is conducted by pre defined objectives of the investigation and the thematic framework of the content to be analysed before commencing the research. For this research work, the data collected from the respondents are to be analysed based on the pre set framework of contents of the Hampshire county council ( http://www3.hants.gov.uk/hantsdirectfaqs.htm ) and the customer service centre feedback system of the National Health Services (NHS) . Data Analysis: From the nature of responses received from the chosen respondents , it can be seen that most of the respondents had received the contact details of the social care contact centres from the yellow pages and a few of them had obtained it from the websites. Concerning the type of service or the type of enquiry requested few of them had enquired about childcare services, a few about adult social care services. Many of the respondents had contacted the contact centre over phone and only very few have contacted through website. The specific type of services needed by the people include old age care, child care. For the fifth question, the response of the respondents was that the information obtained from the social care contact centre were useful and they were able to meet the social care team. The response regarding the charges to the telephone calls was that most of the calls were charged at 4p by BT at the same time the respondents felt that the call charges for the 0845 line were a bit higher. For the seventh question, regarding the availability of services, the response was that only a few contact centres provide 24 hr contact services, while many of them have limited working hours for providing the information. For the question regarding IVR, the response was that during non working time, the IVR was active and during the working hours contact personnel were available to reply the respondents of the survey. The charges levied for the information given by the contact centres were nominal for general enquiries, for specific enquiries, the charges are slightly higher. For the tenth question, the respondents feel that they were able to get sufficient information about health care services in detail . Ethical issues in the interview: As is customary for most of the social science research approaches, this research work has also taken care of the ethical aspects of the research. Before the conduct of the survey, a confidentially report was issued to the respondents and were duly signed by the respondents. This confidentiality report declares that the participant of the respondents was truly on voluntary basis and no one was compelled to take the interview. It was also made known to the respondents that their response answers will not be disclosed to anyone unless otherwise permitted by the respondent. To maintain anonymity, the respondents name were not recorded in the response sheets. Thus this research work has considered for the ethical aspects of the interview and survey. Conclusion: This research has dealt with the measurement of the effectives of the social care contact centres in the UK. These contact centres provide vital information to vulnerable people about the social care services available locally and nationally. The measurement of this effective service has been done by a mixed method approach involving both quantitative and qualitative methods. The research has adopted the priority sequence model of Morgan to choose the most appropriate research instrument. As the research concerns contact services, the qualitative method of data collection has been chosen as the main method, supported by the quantitative questionnaire. Based on the data collected, the qualitative framework approach has been used to analyse the qualitative questions. The outcome of these have been reflected upon. References Bauer, MW & Gaskell, G . (2000) . “Qualitative researching with text, image and sound: a practical handbook” , ch. 1. SAGE Publications Ltd. Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). “Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging influences" In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.), pp. 191-215. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. ISBN 0-7619-2757-3 Mervyn S. Jackson & Diane Mead Niblo, ( 1999) “ Positioning qualitative and quantitative methods: Applications to crime in tourist settings” , www.aqr.org.au/local/offer/papers/MJackson.htm retrieved 5 April 2010. Morgan, D. (1998). “Practical strategies for combining qualitative and quantitative methods: Applications to health research”. Qualitative Health Research, 8, 362 - 376. Official website of National Health Services (NHS), http://www.ic.nhs.uk/social-care Wimmer,R.D & Dominick , J.R . ( 2003 ) . “Mass media research: an introduction” . Cengage Learning . Appendices Questionnaires I request your valuable time in answering a few questions related to the effectiveness of the services in the social care contact centres. Though the social care contact centres are not part of the NHS, they offer valuable information to vulnerable people who desperately need information about the social care services. with an intention to improve this service facility, this interview and survey are being conducted. Kindly give your opinion. Quantitative questions Q1. How is the speed of response? Q2. How is the availability of the service? Q3. What do you feel about the information about all types of social care services ? Q4. What is the waiting time for any query? Q5. How much satisfying is the information you receive? Q6. What do you feel about the information about all types of health care services ? Q7. How do you feel about the telephone charges for a call? Q8. Was the information useful to you? For all these questions, the respondents are to answer on a Likert scale ( numerical scale) as follows Excellent –4 , Good –3 , Moderate –2 , Bad –1 Qualitative Questionnaire Q1. How did you contact the social care contact centre? Q2. Whom or what specific service you wanted to enquire about? Q3. From where did you get the contact details of the social care contact centre? Q4. What type of detail you needed? Q5. Were you able to contact the social care team? Q6. Are the telephone charging packages nominal? Q7. Is the contact centre available at all time? Q8. Is there any IVR or is there a direct personal reply? Q9. What do you feel about the care charges? Q10. Does the contact centre give information about health care? Read More