Graduate Student Internship Program

This internship has been filled.

Washington State

Data Analysis or Needs Assessment Intern
Washington State Department of Health
Maternal and Child Health Assessment Section, Olympia, WA
Skill Areas: Data Analysis and Monitoring, Needs Assessment

Agency Information

The internship project will be housed in the Maternal Child Health (MCH) section of Community and Family Health, Washington State Department of Health (DOH). The MCH Program works to promote an environment that supports and encourages the optimal health of all women of childbearing age, infants, children, adolescents and their families. Maternal and Child Health has five major program areas: Children with Special Health Care Needs, Child and Adolescent Health, Maternal and Infant Health, Genetics, and Immunizations. The intern will be located within the MCH Assessment Section, which provides assessment services to all four areas. The primary project supervisor will be Shumei Yun, manager of the MCH Assessment Unit at the Washington State Department of Health.

For this internship, the intern will select one of the following projects: (1) Complete a bias analysis of adolescent survey or (2) Adolescent Needs Assessment. The student should indicate which project they are interested in completing.

Purpose, goals, and objectives of internship

Project 1: Bias analysis of adolescent survey
Purpose: A random sample of schools, by grade, was asked to participate in the state sample of the 2008 Healthy Youth Survey. In order to generalize survey results from this sample to all the students in Washington State, DOH performs a bias analysis to ensure that those who participated in the Healthy Youth Survey were not different in their behaviors from those who did not participate.
Goal: Complete bias analysis of Healthy Youth Survey 2008
Objectives: (1) Develop a bias analysis plan. (2) Examine four potential forms of bias: school participation bias, student response bias, differences in schools that used the "tear-off" questions compared with schools that did not, and bias on the last items on the survey due to some students being unable to complete the questionnaire in the time allotted. (3) Summarize results in a report.

Project 2: Adolescent Needs Assessment
The purpose of this component is to update an Adolescent Needs Assessment report used for planning by the Adolescent health section and other partners around the state. This is part of our Five Year Needs Assessment work for the MCH Block grant. The report addresses key issues that adolescents face. Topics include school achievement, nutrition and physical activity, drugs, alcohol and tobacco, injury and violence, oral health, sexual health, mental health and environmental health. A primary data source for the fact sheets is the Washington State Healthy Youth Survey (HYS), which is a comprehensive school-based survey last implemented in 2008. This survey of 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th graders focuses on health-risk behaviors related to death and injury such as unintentional and intentional injury behaviors, smoking, and substance use as well as risk and protective factors. Data from 2008 will be available in Spring 2009.
Goal: Update Adolescent Needs Assessment
Objectives: (1) Analyze and interpret data on the health status and health behaviors of Washington state adolescents, using multiple data sources including the Healthy Youth Survey. (2) Develop a format that will allow easy access to the information.

Data or analytic tasks and activities

Project 1:The primary data used in the bias analysis will be the 2008 Health Youth Survey data. The intern will link school-level from the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to the Healthy Youth Survey. The dataset may need to be weighted and otherwise manipulated in order to create a format appropriate for analysis. Analysis may include using t-tests for continuous items and chi-squares tests or logistic regression for dichotomous items. The results will be summarized in a report and posted on the DOH website. See the 2004 Healthy Youth Bias analysis report for more information. Stata do-files and output from the 2004 bias analysis will be available for reference.

Project 2: The adolescent needs assessment project requires the development of an analytic plan and the analysis and interpretation of data from multiple sources, including the Healthy Youth survey, death certificate data, and hospitalization data.

Data or analytic skills required

• Ability to analyze and interpret data
• Graduate classes in epidemiology and statistics
• Basic skills in analytic software
• Software skills should include working with word processing, spreadsheets (like Microsoft Word and Excel) and working with statistical software such as Stata

Supervisors

Primary: Shumei Yun, MD, PhD., an epidemiologist and the manager of the MCH Assessment Section.

Secondary: Diane Pilkey, RN MPH from the Assessment Section of the Washington State Department of Health Office of Maternal and Child Health.

Internship begins

Start date is flexible; whatever works best for the intern.

Housing

There are many apartment complexes and housing options in Olympia and information on them can be provided.

Transportation

The worksite is accessible via public transportation.

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