Evidence-Based Group Work How Can I Increase

Evidence-Based Group Work

How can I increase attendance of a support group for at-risk teenage Latino students in a school setting?

Search for Evidence

In order to search for evidence in increasing attendance of a support group for Latino students in a school setting, I went to PubMed as my initial search engine. I chose PubMed because I have found it to be a great starting place for health-care research. Not only does it provide details about relevant articles, but it provides abstracts for most of those articles, as well as the full-text of many articles. Initially my question was how to increase the attendance of a support group for minority students in a school setting, but the amount of available information was overwhelming, so I then narrowed my search to the Latino community. The search terms that I used were "support group," "group therapy," "school setting," "teenage," "Latino," "Spanish," "language," "attendance," and "increase."

Review of the Evidence

In "Real groups: The design and immediate effects of a prevention intervention for Latino children," Marsiglia et al. discussed the impact of small-group intervention designed to complement a school-based substance abuse prevention program for children and youth. The group members were referred by teachers as those who were considered in need of additional support because they were considered high risk for substance abuse. The merit of this study is questionable, which is something that the researchers acknowledged. They felt that the teachers had referred students because of behavior problems, rather than because the students were actually at high-risk for drug use. As a result, the findings of the study were inconclusive and did not have any real applicability in establishing a group of the same type. It would be inappropriate to conclude that the study was worthless because it was inconclusive in its goal. On the contrary, it helped point out several implementation issues that can be associated with the referral of group participants. Furthermore, it helped highlight some of the problems of working with younger-age children who have not been identified as engaging in antisocial behaviors. It did identify several areas of need in future studies including: whether students felt they were part of the group, whether the students felt the group was helpful, whether the students felt that they were helpful to other group participants, and whether the students felt that the group was transformative. The suggestion was that measuring the students' personal perceptions would help shape better group-work protocol (Marsiglia et al., 2010).

In "Addressing conflict rooted in diversity: the role of the facilitator," Camacho discusses issues that are specific to working with minority groups. Camacho addresses the fact that social workers have to acknowledge diversity. The exercise described in the article focused on a retreat that was held by a Latino group. A conflict occurred at the retreat, and that conflict helped highlight the dangers of cultural insensitivity. It also helped highlight the dangers of treating a minority group as if it is culturally heterogeneous. The conflict at issue had to do with statements made at a prior event by one of the group members to a gay male member of the group. It also had to do with a conflict between the collectivist approach of the group and the individualistic approach by the group member. The group seemed to believe that being Latino, a shared minority experience, would be the defining experience for group members. However, the homophobia that some gay members felt they experienced as group members helped demonstrate that not all group members will have the same concerns or agendas. It is critical to keep this in mind because of the tendency to assume heterogeneity among group members.

From an evidentiary perspective, this study lacked the type of reliability and validity that would suggest that the experiment could be duplicated. However, it would be erroneous to suggest that the study then lacked merit. On the contrary, by providing a window into potential conflicts in minority group settings, this particular study helped highlight some of the potential problems in working with minority groups. It explained exactly how intra-group conflict could occur and that facilitators and group members have to remain aware of possible conflicts between group members because of concerns that are not specifically related to that group work.

Using the Evidence in my Group Work Practice