Completing the Cycle (Closing the Loop)
Ask yourself these questions with regards to your potential CATS submission to determine if you closed the loop. Note that these steps parallel the action research cycle.
Did you:
- Start with an idea for improvement?
- Gather baseline data?
- Plan an intervention/strategy to facilitate the improvement?
- Implement the intervention/strategy?
- Gather data derived from the newly implemented intervention/strategy?
- Compare the recent data with the original baseline data to determine if your intervention/strategy was successful?
- Make a decision based on the data? (Either continue on with the new intervention/strategy or try something different.)
If your answer to each of these questions is “Yes” then you have completed the cycle (closed the loop). Now write a CATS!