Research proposal (including research strategy, plain language statement and consent form (2500 – 3500 words)

Prepare the research proposal Preparation: Build your proposal based upon the selection of your topic, research questions, objectives and outcome of the literature review. Decide whether quantitative and/or qualitative approaches are necessary and define the methodology best suited to the required outcomes. Address any ethical issues that may be of concern when conducting the research. Include a plain language statement and draft consent form (s) if required. Presentation: Prepare the proposal in Word. Assessment criteria: Refer to the assessment rubric

Are current practices meeting the organizational goals?

Assignment Content Gather as much information about your selected problem as possible. Consider both qualitative and quantitative data. For example: ·      Leader and peer interviews ·      Patient/customer surveys ·      Quality improvement (QI) reports from the facility ·      Benchmarking studies/baseline data. If baseline data is available: ·      What are the goals? ·      Are current practices meeting the organizational goals? ·      Are the prescribed practices followed? Apply any relevant key quality improvement tools to your problem. Review and aggregate the information you collected on the selected problem. Determine the level of risk and frequency of the problem. This will provide you with the scope and significance of the problem.  

Explain your budget to the county council.

Analyze the following scenario: River County is planning several capital acquisitions for the coming year. These include the purchase of two new garbage trucks at $150,000 each, one new bulldozer at $240,000, three new riding lawn mowers at $16,000 each, and construction of an activity center in the part for $650,000. The expected lifetime of the various capital items is 10 years for the garbage trucks, 8 years for the bulldozer, 5 years for the lawn mowers, and 40 years for the activity center. Prepare a capital budget for the items to be acquired, showing their estimated lifetimes, and their per unit and total costs. Clearly label the calculations for the required components of the capital budget using Excel. Use formulas to show the interrelationships and format the cells to insert a comma if there is more than three numbers and round to the nearest whole number. Explain your budget to the county council.

Discuss standard costs and when it is efficient to use standard costs.

Week 7 Discussion Discuss standard costs and when it is efficient to use standard costs? Reply this 1st post: Standard Costs Standard costs are projections of actual costs in a firm’s manufacturing process as actual costs cannot be identified in advance. To obtain a standard cost, the summation of direct materials, manufacturing overheads, and direct labor are necessary (Drury, 2013). Standard costing is the accounting system used to identify the variances between standard and actual costing. Standard costs are beneficial to a firm as it can assign value to its inventory by multiplying the actual stock by the standard cost of each item.             Similarly, it is useful in product pricing as budgets furnish information on expected expenses incurred by the business. Such information guides management on the amount to charge to obtain target profit (Collis, 2016). Standard costs assume there are no fluctuations in prices and, as such, allow financial costs to be produced more accessible and faster. The main disadvantages are that it only focuses on unfavorable variances and does not provide enough information to distinguish product units.   Standard costs are useful, especially in the manufacturing industry, for budgeting for the upcoming year. Standard costs are vital in the analysis of variances and cost control as they are compared against the actual costs with variations caused changes in material and labor costs as well as manufacturing overheads (The Role of Standard Costs in Management | Managerial Accounting, n.d.). It explains the management by exception method. For instance, unfavorable variance calls for management action in guiding the firm to achieve the cost element of its profit objective. Unfavorable difference occurs when the actual costs are more than the ideal costs. A favorable budget difference is when actual expenses do not exceed typical costs and do not require management action.  Notably, in developing standards, assumed conditions for meeting the standards is considerable. There are ideal and practical standards. Perfect standards form the best manufacturing circumstances where workers are highly efficient and skilled and with no machinery problems (Collis, 2016). Reasonable standards are strict but attainable requirements with allowances for machinery issues and workers’ rest periods.  References Collis, J. (2016). Management accounting. Drury, C. M. (2013). Management and cost accounting. Springer.  The Role of Standard Costs in Management | Managerial Accounting. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from ———————————————————————————————————————————— Reply second post:  Standard costs set standards for measuring the performance of specific tasks completion; standards are set both for quantity and costs needed to produce goods or services (Noreen, 2020). Cost standards indicate what the cost per unit should be. Standard costs can be analyzed by the services we provide in retail sales, by examining quota attainment and sales based on hourly wages; the cost to achieve one sale with a variance if it takes less or more time over the duration of a set time period.    Noreen, (2020), outlines several key advantages to standard costs; for management and leadership, this analysis allows management to focus on outside factors as long as costs conform to standards. They also provide benchmarks for both efficiency and performance- this is especially appropriate when dealing with sales and quota targets and attainment. This also simplifies bookkeeping as standard costs for materials, labor, and overhead can be charged to jobs.    There are also restrictions and pitfalls to be aware of standard costs. One issue that I experience is using standard costs to assign blame or punish subordinates, as opposed to examining processes that may be negatively impacting the process. In sales, that means using standard costs variances negatively may lead to unethical sales practices to cover up or hide unfavorable cost vs profit reporting.    Noreen, E.W., Brewer, P.C. & Garrison, R.H.  (2020).  Managerial Accounting for Managers.  5th edition.  McGraw-Hill + e-book + Connect + Learn ISBN: 978-1260480771

Identify a community that interests you and define it according to the reading materials concerned with the concept of community.

1. Identify a community that interests you and define it according to the reading materials concerned with the concept of community. It could be a community of which you are a part. Some examples of how you can define community include: A community that is defined by geographic location, like a small rural area or an urban suburb; A community defined by those who share an experience, such as a disability or illness; A community of connection such as a specific cultural group; A community of interest, such as a hobby group; A community defined by those advocating for the rights of a certain group of people; A community defined by a certain experience of disadvantage; Some communities could contain several element from the above. 2. Conduct a desktop needs analysis of that community using available data or information from reputable websites and credible research papers. 3. Develop a plan for engaging with members of that community in order to work collaboratively to complete the needs analysis and plan for action. In your answer, explain how Ife’s (2016) community development principles would inform your practice.

Describe how or if these communication strategies can be used to motivate and encourage individuals with disabilities how to adapt to different learning environments.

Effective teachers must be able to draw from a variety of strategies in order to respond to different, challenging student behaviors. Teachers can apply these strategies to remind students of expectations, redirect behavior, and positively respond to expected behavior in the classroom. Review the Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) Example. Then, use the “Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) Template” to complete this assignment. Identifying one student from the “Class Profile” who would benefit from additional intervention, complete a behavior intervention plan to include: ·         Behavior ·         Goals and how they will be measured ·         Interventions and Frequency of Interventions ·         Person Responsible In a 500-750 word essay, describe strategies teachers can use to respond to challenging behavior during classroom instruction. Your essay should address the following topics: ·         Describe and provide implementation examples of the following strategies: specific praise, choice making, effective group contingencies, contingent instructions, and time-out. ·         Describe how or if these communication strategies can be used to motivate and encourage individuals with disabilities how to adapt to different learning environments. ·         Discuss any cautions related to using each strategy. ·         Describe the decision making process that teachers use when deciding how to intervene on challenging behavior when engaged in instruction. Support your findings with a minimum of two scholarly resources.

OPERATIONAL ANALYSIS.

Operational Analysis Read Case Study “Mead Meals on Wheels” in Chapter 9 of the required text. Using the information in the case study, discuss the following: ·         MMWC buys the equipment to expand their services. Present a recommendation supporting the type of financial impact the expansion of services will have on MMWC. ·         Clearly label the calculation of the impact of food costs and the financial impact costs. Use formulas to calculate the costs and format the cells to insert a comma if there is more than three numbers and round to the nearest whole number. ·         Submit to your instructor your two-to-three page Word document (not including title and reference pages) and your Excel worksheet. Your paper should be formatted according to APA style as outlined in the approved APA style guide, and you must cite at least two scholarly sources Case Study Mead Meals on Wheels The Mead Meals on Wheels Center (MMWC) provides meals every day to the homebound elderly. The city of Wabash pays MMWC $32 per week for each person it serves. There is no shortage of demand for MMWC’s services among the elderly citizens of Wabash, and MMWC can find qualified recipients for as many meals as it can deliver. Each person helped by MMWC receives two hot meals per day, seven days per week, for a total of 14 meals every week. To service the contract, MMWC has a central kitchen that has the capacity to produce a maximum of 9,600 meals per day. It costs MMWC an average of $36,000 per week to operate the kitchen and other central facilities regardless of the number of meals that MMWC serves. This covers all of MMWC’s fixed costs (e.g., rent, equipment costs, and its personnel including administrative staff) as well as its fixed seasonal service contract costs (utilities, snow removal, etc.). The first problem that MMWC faces is figuring out how much it can afford to spend per person, per week for food to supply the program. Food is MMWC’s only variable expense. You are MMWC’s only program analyst. Question 1: The executive director has come to you to calculate how much MMWC can spend per week, per person and still break even. What do you tell the executive director? Using your work to define MMWC’s spending limit, the executive director prepared a request for bids and sent it to all of the food purveyors in and near Wabash. The best bid came in at $.50 (fifty cents) below the number that you have calculated as MMWC’s break-even per person-week. Using the lowest bid and the information given earlier, the executive director wants you to prepare a budget for MMWC in a format that will allow her to monitor MMWC’s performance on a quarterly basis for the coming year. For budgeting purposes, the executive director has told you to assume that there are 13 weeks in each quarter. You know from your experience that the fixed expenses for the organization vary by season.