Analyzing the Data

Heather and I have met about 2-3 times a week over the past few weeks. We have gathered results by interviewing people who are/were interested in adoption and who have already adopted. We also had our friends and families respond to a few key questions we emiled out in order to help us determine what content will be most useful to have on the website we are creating.

After receiving responses from 26 individuals, we analyzed the responses by reading through them individually, creating categories under which we could place them, and adding check marks to those categories that were represented in additional responses.

After sorting through all of the responses, we decided to analyze the data by determing a reasonable percentage for the number of responses that would have to be present in order for the individual category to be placed on our website. As we had 26 total respondents, we decided that a reasonable "Put on website" percentage for the Agency Specific section of our website would be 20% (more than 5 responses in an individual category) and that 15% (at least 4 responses in an individual category) would be a reasonable percentage for the General Descriptive section of our website since this is not what our questions or interviews were geared toward.

Updating Database with Friends' Responses

Over the past couple of days, I have added all of the responses I've received to one of our databases.

I have also emailed and researched another agency- The Family Network, Inc. (http://www.adopt-familynetwork.com/). Thailand is not an international program mentioned on the company's website, but the Thailand Adoption site says they've recently done some Thai placements, so I emailed the agency to find out more...I have not heard back yet.

Updating Databases, Sending Out Questionnaires, AI's For Next Time

Heather and I met for about 2 hours today. I updated our database with 2 new sets of responses we've received from people who are interested in adopting or who have already adopted. We have 5 of these responses total now, which Heather and I do not believe is enough.

I modified and shortened our list of questions, and we each sent this new questionnaire to several people on our emailing lists. We believe this information can still be useful, and we hypothesize that people who are not considering adoption will come up with similar responses to what we have already captured in our database. I've created a new database to keep track of all of the responses Heather and I receive from the emails we each sent out today. This afternoon, I've already received 1 set of responses and have updated the database with it.

Until we meet again next Thursday, I will continue to update the new database with new responses. I will also continue to research adoption agencies and to capture some of what I discover in a spreadsheet.

Contacting Agencies

I am researching and emailing agencies that appear to facilitate adoption from Thailand. I have requested information packets (noted as "a" below) and/or asked for contact information for adoptive parents who may be willing to answer the list of questions Heather and I put together (noted as "b" below). Here is who I emailed and today:

1. All About Adoptions- a (emailed domestic adoption office for international packet so I wouldn't be emailing Maimi office twice),b (emailed Miami office)
2. A.S.I.A. (Adoption Service Information Agency)- a,b. emailed main office in Maryland
3. Crossroads Adoption Services- a,b (they don't have anyone to refer to us)
4.Adoption Advocates International- a (received)

I am also maintaining a database to keep updated and remain organized about our current communication status with each of the agencies we've researched.

Updating the Database

Tonight I added another set of responses to our database/spreadsheet and sent the updated document to Heather. I also created a spreadsheet of questions for people to fill out so that we can simply copy and paste their responses into the Excel database we have.

I emailed All About Adoptions, Inc. (foreign@allaboutadoptions.org), asking for referrals of families who had adopted internationally through the agency. Hopefully, we can send these referrals our questionnaire in order to increase the quantity and diversity of the feedback we are getting.

Modifying the GANTT Chart

Today, Heather and I met for almost 2 hours. We updated each other on each of our progress, looked at our introduction, and revised our GANTT chart due to the recent modification of our project. This time, we each printed out the chart and are determined to stay on schedule in order to complete the project before graduation in June. We each created action items that corresponded to the new GANTT chart and will have these items completed/worked on by our next meeting (Thurs., Aprl 21st). My action items are: 1. call/email agencies in order to interview or send questionaires to people who have adopted from Thailand through them 2. update blogs 3. continue to research agencies and fill out the agency review spreasheet we created to Heather in order to keep her updated 4. add Heather's interviewee responses to the Excel spreadsheet/database we've created so that we can begin to analyze the date/responses at our next meeting.

Researching Agencies

This morning, I researched Thailand adoption agencies and filled in the database I created with the information I found on different agencies websites. The main agencies I looked at were Adoption Advocates International (www.adoptionadvocates.org/) and All About Adoptions (http://www.allaboutadoptions.org/). I also looked at a Thailand Adoption website (http://www.neiu.edu/%7Erghiggin/Thaiadopt/start.html), which is somewhat similar to what Heather and I are now doing. The website has links to different US based adoption agencies that facilitate adoption in Thailand. It is very wordy and not well layed out for the most part, but it does have a few links to adoption resources and events that the group who created the website puts on.

Beginning the Report

We met for an hour in order to start planning and doing specifics for our modified senior project. We wrote an outline for most of the introduction part of our report, discussing how to present the "problem" we saw, the opportunity, our motivation and objectives/goals of the project. I left with a list of action items for myself to have completed for our next meeting on Tuesday: 1. write my part of the Motivation section for the introduction, 2. finish and email Heather the Excel spreadsheet with the responses from our list of questions, 3. update blogs, and 4. look up agencies that do adoption in Thailand (see Excel spreadsheet with the list of what information to get from agency web sites, including html's.).

Sr. Project Modification & Specification

Heather and I met before our meeting with Dr. Wild. During this hour, we emailed our questions to Kim, a friend of Jen, in order to try to receive responses that will help us determine the content of our web site. I also worked on documenting and organizing the responses we've received so far (2) to our questions. Then, we went to Dr. Wild's office to propose our new direction for our project. She approved and helped us focus...We are now using Front Page to create a web site that will help couples interested in adopting from Thailand find and choose an agency to work with. We will also be turning in a report.

Discussing Modification of Sr. Project

Today, we met at Heather's for 1.5 hours. I have been feeling a lack of direction and focus, which I mentioned and described to Heather. Heather had also been thinking about ammending our project a little. We decided to stay focused on helping couples interested in adopting from Thailand. However, instead of creating/writing a hard copy guide book to take these couples all the way through the adoption process, we would like to focus on creating a web site (this will be a huge part of our learning, and something we believe we should know how to do before leaving college). This web site will provide information about different agencies that do adoption in Thailand, along with some general information about adopting from Thailand, in order to help couples choose an agency to work with and to feel more knowledgeable about what is involved in adopting from Thailand. We will meet with Dr. Wild next week in order to have her approve our project modification.