HD499 Unit 6 Seminar Reflection Example

Forty-Five or Seventy-One? A Unit 6 Seminar Reflection on Two Figures for One Fact in a Capstone Draft

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

HD499: Bachelor's Capstone in Health Education and Promotion

Unit 6 Seminar Reflection

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The seminar, the drafts and the figures are composite; the planning text, the stage model and the reflective model cited are real.

The Exercise

Our instructor had everyone swap capstone drafts with a partner and read only for consistency: did each figure, population and term mean the same thing everywhere it appeared? We were not to comment on writing or ideas, only on agreement between sections. It sounded like the dullest possible exercise, and I expected to finish early. I had reread my own drafts several times and was fairly sure the numbers were clean, because I had been careful to round consistently and cite every source.

What My Partner Found

My partner circled two numbers within minutes. My assessment put the share of all surveyed patients keeping pills at about 45 percent. The program plan's objective said the program would reduce "the 71 percent of patients who keep their pills." My partner then asked which was true.

Both were, for different groups. In the survey of 212 patients, 64 percent had pills left, and of those, 71 percent planned to keep them. So 71 percent of patients with leftovers kept them, which is about 45 percent of all patients. In the assessment I had used all patients as the denominator. In the plan, written a week later, I had copied the 71 from my notes without the qualifier.

The number had not changed; its denominator had, and because I never wrote the denominator next to the number, I could not see that my own sections were describing two different groups.

What Else Moved With It

Once we looked, the problem spread. My objective set a target of 25 percent keeping pills, which made sense against 45 but would have been a much smaller improvement against 71. My evaluation draft planned to survey only patients with leftovers, which would measure against 71, not 45. And my presentation outline said "seven in ten" on its opening slide. One unclear number had produced three inconsistent sections.

Planning texts stress that each objective must use a baseline defined the same way as the measure that will evaluate it (Issel & Wells, 2018). I had treated that as obvious and missed it in my own work. The error was not in my arithmetic, which was correct each time, but in my habit of writing a number down without the group it described. Over ten weeks that habit was enough to make my own document contradict itself.

What I Changed

I now state every percentage with its denominator in the same sentence, such as "45 percent of all surgical patients surveyed" or "71 percent of those with pills left." I made a one-page fact sheet for the capstone listing every key figure, its denominator and its source, and I check each section against it before submitting. The objective and evaluation now both use all surgical patients as the denominator. The presentation will use "nearly half."

What I Learned About Myself

Gibbs's reflective cycle asks what I felt. Embarrassment first, because I thought I had been careful with numbers. Then relief that a classmate found it rather than the board of health (Gibbs, 1988). A board member who spotted two different figures in my presentation would reasonably wonder what else was wrong, and the whole project would have lost credibility over a problem that took five minutes to fix once someone saw it. I also noticed that I write sections at different times in different moods, and that consistency does not happen on its own over a ten-week project.

The project's theory, the Precaution Adoption Process Model, describes stages of readiness (Weinstein, 1988), and the 45 percent figure matters for knowing how many patients are still in the early stages. Getting the denominator wrong would have distorted the plan's starting point.

What I Will Do Differently

Keep a fact sheet from the very first unit of any long project, and update it whenever a figure changes. Write denominators every time. Ask a reader to check consistency, not just quality, before any document leaves my hands, even when I am short of time.

A Question I Still Have

My partner suggested a fact sheet approach of their own, a running table updated every time a draft changes, and I plan to borrow it. Should the capstone report both figures, since each answers a different question, or choose one to avoid confusing readers? I lean toward both, with clear labels, but I would like to know what the board of health would find easier to follow.

References

Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic.

Issel, L. M., & Wells, R. (2018). Health program planning and evaluation: A practical, systematic approach for community health (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Weinstein, N. D. (1988). The precaution adoption process. Health Psychology, 7(4), 355-386. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.7.4.355