Business Finance Homework Help

Response Guidelines

Respond to at least two peers. Select the strength or weakness of the post that most interests you and explain how it relates to an aspect of the data analysis you are doing with your selected organization.

Student post down below:

Data analysis is a direction towards looking into an organization and viewing what that organization is supporting, completing, and working on or towards. However, data representation and analysis are only as useful as the information being gathered. When analyzing data, its speaking for the organization as a whole. Understanding what is happening within the organization, how the data is organized, what information is being represented, etc. is helpful. It helps determine what is working, not working, what changes are needed for the organization to be successful, what are the opinions and views of stakeholders and community members, and much more (Guenole, Ferrar, & Feinzig, 2017).

           The Maslow Project is a community resource and outreach program to assist homeless and at-risk homeless youth and their families. There is a range of demographics in the data that is representing age, race, ethnicity, how many youths were helped with or without guardians, what items were helped with (food boxes, clothes, housing assistance, etc.), graduation rates, case management assistance, and much more. Their continuous growth has allowed more access and connections to the local resources within the community. The limitations of the data are that they do offer diverse services that they are working with in the community, however the population that is served in not very diverse and is predominantly white. The data needs to represent the reality of the population in need and show how all populations are being served based on those needs. The problem focus area for the Maslow Project is not only working and assisting with homeless or at-risk homeless youth and their families, but the “why” that is behind it. Why are the numbers of homeless and at-risk homeless youth increasing? What services are working for the needs of the community? What services are missing? What are the needs of the community in its entirety? What is causing the need of assistance (mental health, poverty, substance misuse, etc.)? 

           The strengths of The Maslow Project are its partnership with the local children in the community and its partnership with other local community resources (Department of Human Services, tutoring services, employment opportunities and training, case management, housing, etc.). The data is representative of what is happening in these areas of need and how they are serving that population. The weakness of the data for the Maslow Project is that the “why” is not being answered when reading or analyzing the data. Being able to see what is being served to the members of the community and ow much help was given per category is extremely beneficial for the organization, however being able to identify a possible cause or barrier can potentially reduce the number of individuals in need and increase their access in receiving help to be able to transition off services. 

Limitations of Data

The data from The Florida Department of Elder Affairs (DOEA) will be analyzed using Excel. Since the data is in a table format, the analysis will visualize the information on graphs and charts. Bar graphs and pie charts will be appropriate for the visualization. However, there are limitations, such as limited access to data and issues with the sample size. Although DOEA provided much of the information about the elderly in Florida, it did not cover some critical characteristics of the population. For example, the data did not indicate the proportion of seniors living below or above the state poverty level. Additionally, the organization used a small sample size for the caregiver data (The Florida Department of Elder Affairs, 2016). This sample size may not reflect the caregiver population’s actual characteristics, leading to inaccurate conclusions.

The organization has strengths in the caregiver support program since it receives financial support from state and federal governments. This assistance is valuable when creating the budget for program improvements. Moreover, DOEA has clear mission and vision statements that help focus on its primary goal of improving the well-being and safety of senior adults in Florida (The Florida Department of Elder Affairs, 2021). The agency also has a well-structured administration which helps provide direction for the various operations in the caregiver support program. Nevertheless, DOEA has an insufficient number of trained caregivers in their program. This issue presents a weakness in the organization since it cannot attend to all the elders in need (The Florida Department of Elder Affairs, 2016). Therefore, the data will help improve the issue by identifying the shortage of caregivers. The data will also be used to decide when to recruit more caregivers and what skills to teach them during the program. This approach will ensure the caregivers have the necessary skills and knowledge to care for the seniors.