The objective of our research is to determine the efficacy, diversity, and factors that influence intent to stay in public child welfare, specifically applied to the graduates of the Title IV-E program at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire (UWEC). For decades, child welfare agencies have experienced near consistent turnover rates ranging from 20-40%. We hope to use the data gathered towards improving the program at UWEC by evaluating preparedness, diversity, and retention to decrease turnover rates and increase intent to stay. Participants will be UWEC Title IV-E graduates who have been employed in the child welfare workforce for at least six months. In the study, participants (n=50) will be asked to complete portions of the Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessment (COHA) and a semi-structured interview. Examples of sections in the COHA are as follows: Peer Support, Supervision, Job Satisfaction, Intent to Stay, and Self-Care. The interview will explore burnout, secondary trauma, and compassion fatigue. We expect results that show the Title IV-E program at UWEC has better prepared social work graduates to succeed in the child welfare field. We expect that job satisfaction and supervision/peer support are major influencers on intent to stay in child welfare.
Our project examines how students navigate forming social connections during their first year of college. According to Liu et al. (2025), social connectedness is multidimensional and influenced by students’ perceptions of their relationships, the actions they take to engage with others, and the emotions associated with belonging and inclusion. We chose to focus on this topic because prior research demonstrates links between social connectedness, academic performance, and mental health.We developed a semi-structured interview and selected two pre-existing measures to explore social connectedness. The interview includes questions about respondents’ high school expectations regarding making connections in college compared to what actually occurred, as well as questions about the actions they took to build social networks. The Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) and R-UCLA Loneliness scales will be used to examine respondents’ emotions related to connectedness. Respondents have been identified using purposive sampling (all UWEC first-year students), and our goal is to meet with twelve participants.Once data collection is complete, we will conduct a thematic analysis of the interview responses and use descriptive statistics to analyze the FoMO and loneliness data. Our goal for this project is to better understand how UWEC students form social connections during their first year of college.
