Aerosim Flight Academy Houston Student Use of Mental Health Services Essay

I’m working on a communications writing question and need a sample draft to help me learn.

Research in the workplace solves a problem. Tasked with a problem in the workplace, you may be asked gather the information necessary to fully understand the issue at hand, solve that problem (or offer potential solutions), prove that your solutions are viable, and/or test your solution(s). Doing this work requires different types of research that go beyond simply querying a library database or using Google. You often will need to speak directly to target populations and audiences, and directly contact resources and experts in different professions and in the community. You also may need information in addition to or instead of scholarly resources. Local and national journalism may add context and perspective. Professional experts, government agencies, state and local authorities all may be relevant sources, as are individuals in target populations. Essentially, research in the workplace requires you to think critically and creatively about

• The type of information you need; and
• The best way to get that information.

Your job as a researcher is to address, explain, and/or solve a problem using the most relevant and applicable methods and resources. If a resource can supply information you need, then it is the right resource for the job.

It’s also important when researching a topic to keep in mind that you probably aren’t the first person or organization to deal with this issue. Look at other organizations, groups, or communities negotiating the same or similar issue. Research how those groups describe and deal with the problem. The perspective of experience is invaluable to your work.

Assignment

This project asks you to do workplace research into a local problem impacting USF or the surrounding community. Your goal for this project is to describe a local problem in detail using as much information as you can gather from as many different sources as are useful. That means you are looking at research gathered by others (e.g., government agencies, non-profit organizations, professional and academic experts, as well as local sources from USF or the immediate community), but you will also gather your own data by asking impacted populations for their perspective. You will produce a memo that reports your findings, giving readers a robust understanding of the local problem you have researched.

Note: You don’t need to solve your problem in this report. In fact, you really shouldn’t try to. That’s not the goal of this report. You should think of this document as a preliminary document that gathers the information you need to start developing a solution in an informed way. That is, you want to gather as much detailed information about the problem as you can in one place to serve as a resource document for later attempts to solve the problem.

You will try to actually solve a problem in the next project (Project 4). For that project, you may end up trying to solve the problem you write about for Project 3, or you may end up trying to solve a new problem.

Required Topics

Once you have selected a problem (see below for examples), you will research the problem, to include the following topics:

• Background information: Put the problem in context. What does the audience need to know to understand why the problem is a problem?
• Detailed Description of the problem at USF/In the local community: Describe the local problem in detail. What is happening here?
  • I don’t want to read anything in this section about why the problem is bad. That is covered in the Background Information section.
  • I also don’t want to read anything in this section about what causes the problem. That’s for the Causes.
  • What I do want to read is a detailed description of what the problem actually is. What exactly is happening? For example, if you write about poor sewage in the Tampa area, tell me exactly the different ways in which Tampa’s sewage system is failing, what effects this is causing, where the failures are primarily located, when the failures occur most often, etc. Give me enough details so that I understand exactly what is going wrong.
• Causes of the problem: Describe the factors contributing to the problem’s occurrence. Why is the problem happening?
• Impacted Population: Describe the people most directly impacted by the problem. Who is the problem happening to? Be specific. Target a local population that could benefit from intervention.
• Previous / Current Solutions: Describe what’s already been tried to fix this problem. These existing solutions are presumably incomplete, since the problem still exists. (If they have already solved the problem you need a new topic.) Why don’t weren’t these solutions enough?

Research Methods

To conduct your research you may wish to use any of the following methods and resources, or anything else that helps you explain the scope of your problem:

• Surveys (highly recommended: social media makes doing surveys easy)
• Newspapers (local, university, national)
• Reports from government agencies, universities, and/or NGOs
• Scholarly research
• Facts and statistics compiled by government agencies and/or NGOs or USF
• Interviews with experts and/or impacted individuals

Sample Problems

To complete this project, you will choose a local problem occurring at USF or in the community. You can select a problem from the list below, or pick your own problem of a similar nature.

IMPORTANT NOTES

1. These are potential problems. I don’t promise ahead of time that these problems are actually real. If you are interested in a topic, do some initial research to make sure there really is a problem here before continuing. For example, you don’t want to do a lot of research on how to boost wifi speed only to find out that most people are actually happy with wifi service on campus.
2. Note that these are all problems in the sense of “bad thing that makes people’s lives worse and which should be fixed.” Don’t pick a theoretical or scientific problem. Find something that is bad, and needs to be made better. Part of what you’ll need to do in your report is demonstrate that the problem is indeed bad, and that it makes people’s lives worse in concrete ways so that it’s worth spending resources to fix it.
3. You don’t need to pick one of these problems. They are just examples, and not necessarily even the best examples. If there’s a local problem that you care about, look at that.

• • The white time for Starbuck’s at USF is too long.
  • There are too many accidents and traffic delays on the USF Tampa Campus.
  • Wifi Connectivity on Campus is Too Slow
  • There aren’t enough electric car charging stations at USF campuses
  • USF needs to reduce its environmental impact
  • Tampa Bay is too polluted
  • Student use of mental health services is too low
  • There is too much binge drinking at USF

Deliverables

Major Deliverable

• A report in memo format that describes your problem in detail using all the research you have conducted. The memo should have the following section headings:
  • Background Information
  • Explanation of the Problem at USF/In the Local Community
  • Causes of the Problem
  • Impacted Population
  • Current / Previous Solutions
  • Works Cited

Supplemental Deliverables

• Research Plan: A memo that identifies the problem you have selected and your plans for researching it, including research methods and potential sources for each required topic listed above.

Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:

• Engage with a problem-based scenario similar to those found in the workplace
• Apply research skills appropriate for addressing a specific problem
• Integrate research into a project deliverable
• Practice professional and technical writing and editing skills
• Practice writing for a specific purpose and audience
• Produce a specific genre of professional discourse (informational report)