Research Methods for Social Prescribing Intervention in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A Quasi-Experimental Design
Overview
This paper outlines a quasi-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design for evaluating a social prescribing workshop on healthy aging through community gardening. The study examines the methodological approach, identifies internal and external validity threats, and describes mitigation strategies for a gerontology specialty project targeting community-dwelling adults aged 65 and older.
What this coursework covers
- Study design and participant recruitment: one-group pretest-posttest design with 20-30 community-dwelling adults aged 65+ attending a senior center workshop
- Data collection methods: identical 5-question surveys measuring social prescribing knowledge, attitudes toward therapeutic gardening, and community engagement intentions administered at pretest, posttest, and 30-day follow-up
- Validity threats and mitigation strategies: discussion of internal validity threats (maturation, history, testing effect, instrumentation, attrition) and external validity concerns (selection bias) with proposed minimization approaches
Preview
Discussion 4: Research Methods
For my gerontology specialty project “From Greenhouse to Garden: Embracing Social Prescribing for Healthy Aging”, I will use a quasi-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design with a 30-day follow-up. Twenty to thirty community-dwelling adults aged 65 and older who attend the one-hour interactive session at a local senior center will serve as the single study group (Chang et al., 2022). Participants will complete an identical 5-question survey before the workshop (pretest) that measures knowledge of social prescribing, attitudes toward therapeutic community gardening, and intention to engage in community activities.
Immediately after the presentation, hands-on gardening goal-setting activity, and resource distribution, they will complete the same survey (posttest) to capture immediate changes. A brief follow-up phone survey at 30 days will assess self-reported behavior changes, such as actual enrollment in a gardening program or reduced feelings of loneliness (Chang et al., 2022). This pre-experimental design is practical for a real-world community health promotion project because it requires no control group or randomization, is low-cost, and directly aligns with the workshop’s pre and post knowledge and behavior-change goals while fitting the logistical constraints of a senior-center setting.
Two major categories of threats could affect this design.