Completed Projects
Dr. Michelle McCarrron
Title of Research
Research 101 for public safety personnel: Course development and pilot testing
Summary
Public safety personnel (PSP) and leadership face an ever-growing number of prevention, intervention, and treatment options for mental health injuries. This large number of options can cause confusion and debate because of limited research. The available research can also be hard for non-academics to access or understand.
PSP leadership is bombarded with requests to have their departments participate in research or pilot treatment/training programs. All of this is done without the leadership having the tools to make informed decisions about which projects might be the most beneficial to their members.
The goal of the current study is to develop a course tailored to provide PSP and their leadership with the skills to access, assess, interpret, and evaluate health research. This course will also offer PSP the skills to effectively engage with researchers and practitioners.
The course was developed collaboratively with PSP, academics, and clinicians and is offered in an easily accessible, online format. If the pilot program is successful, this course will be a valuable tool for PSP and leadership to build their capacity to engage in and understand research. By increasing the capacity of PSP and their leadership to understand research progress towards building better health solutions for PSP will be accelerated.
When to expect results
The course has been created, and preliminary results of the pilot study will be available at the end-of-grant workshop.
Research team
Dr. Michelle McCarron, Research Scientist at the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region; Dr. R. Nicholas Carleton, Scientific Director of CIPSRT and professor of psychology at University of Regina; Alec Couros