https://docs.google.com/document/d/19QcvFpFQnlHrzjhVAwKRFc_696WNZqoHbJMn7aef8oY/edit?hl=en&pli=1#
Methods Practice 2: Participant Observation
Location: Canary Garden Center for Grieving Families
Notes: Canary Garden is a grief counseling/therapy center for families who have lost a loved one. The group I worked with and observed was the 'teens' group consisting of five volunteer counselors and six teenagers. Everyone is wearing clothes that would typically be seen worn at a public school or for leisure. To begin the group sits in a circle on small chairs with each chair being about a foot and a half from the others making the size of the circle not too intimate. The volunteer in charge for the evening began with asking the group (volunteers and attendees both) to each take a turn and say their name, how they were doing that day (on a scale of one to ten, ten being the best), who it was in their family that died and how that person died, and what team they had wanted to win the Superbowl. Most attendees looked at the ground and spoke quietly while sharing the information with the group. The volunteers were older, mostly between the age of 18 and 22 with one outlier who was around the age of 40. The volunteers spoke more loudly and confidently and looked at the others in the circle rather than at the ground as they spoke. Each person took roughly thirty seconds to say their part, the volunteers taking a little longer on average to say their part. The volunteers look more at each other than at the attendees when they are speaking. After all members of the circle have finished saying their part, the volunteer in charge for the day (around 18 years old) begins to explain the group activity for the session. He picks up a large sheet of butcher paper and places it on the ground in the middle of the circle. He explains that when someone we love dies we often feel physical affects from grief. He tells the group that the activity for the group for the session is going to be drawing these things on the paper and talking about them together. First he asks for a volunteer to lay down on the butcher paper to be traced. I temporarily had to leave so I did not see who volunteered to be traced on the sheet of paper or who did the tracing. When I return the leader is explaining that with the traced outline of the person on the paper, he wants each member to draw a picture example of what they feel on the part of the body where they feel pain or suffering. Each member does this and takes two or three minutes explaining what they are drawing as they do so and why they are drawing that. Each member of the circle does that and following each persons explanation and drawing the leader promotes a short discussion on the subject by inviting others to comment on what has been said. The volunteers comment more frequently than the attendees. One member, a girl who is around 14 years old, draws squiggly lines in the stomach of the outline and explains that she feels pain in her stomach when she thinks about her father who died. Others comment that they feel the same sometimes (the girls mostly). One participant comments much more than anyone else. He looks little older than the others but is not a volunteer and seems to have a mental disorder of some kind. His comments are very loud and he often goes off on tangents that others would likely think are unrelated to what has been said. He makes a comment at least once a minute. The others express a little non-verbal annoyance with the behavior of this attendee. When he talks the volunteers are attentive and the attendees do little to acknowledge him speaking. He speaks directly to a volunteer almost all of the time.
Methods Practice 1: Interviewing
Subject: Millie
Background: Teaches Twi at BYU. Originally from Accra, Ghana. Seems to be from a relatively affluent family. Well educated. Translates General Conference into Twi for the Church.
Interview type: Structured
Interview topic: How she perceives malaria and how it has affected her and her family.
Notes:
Said malaria was a big problem in Ghana, even in large cities like Accra. She said mosquitoes are bad near her because it is a coastal region and because of sewage (I assume she is referring to these because areas like these serve as breeding sites). No infants in her family had died of malaria. Many infants die from malaria because their mothers do not think it is serious enough to take them to the doctor until it is too late. Many infants do not die when they contract malaria, so many mothers do not think their infant will die. At Millies home they do not use ITNs. Instead they spray their house with an insecticide every two weeks or so; everyone just goes outside for an hour or two until it's safe to go back inside. They also have screen doors and screens on the windows which prevent mosquitoes from getting in the house. Millie acknowledged that many people in rural areas would need ITNs because screen doors/windows and insecticide are a luxury. Many people die from malaria because they cannot get access to health care, they do not live close enough. People in rural areas might not get ITNs because they would be too expensive for some. When Millie went back to Ghana a few weeks ago she got anti-malarial treatment for her children.
Millie has extended family in rural Ghana and she used to visit them. She liked visiting them because, although people in that part of Ghana didn't have much, they were happy with what they had. She felt set apart from the world when she was there because there was no way to communicate easily with anyone not in the community.
Interview-prompted questions:
Who do mothers not take febrile malaria symptoms seriously? I would really like to see this first hand because I don't understand mothers taking such a risk by not getting medical attention for their child at the first sign of malaria. Is it because the visit to the health-care center would be so expensive that they do not want to visit unless they absolutely know they need to? Is it only among the poorer class that mothers see malaria symptoms and don't get care for their child?
Literature Review Worksheet
1. Infants, preventive methods, decreasing, mortality, wiamoase, rural Ghana.
2. Timely home treatment, IPTC, RDT, SP, Plasmodium falciparum, AS+AQ, anemia, birth weight, morbitidy, ITN, IST, perhennial transmission, parasitic resistance, vector control, multrigravidae vs. primagravidae.
3. Medicine, sociology, public health epidemiology, parasitology.
4. Sub-saharan africa is the area where malaria is most prevalent. Plasmodium fasciparum will soon develop resistance to current treatment methods. A vaccine for malaria will be developed in coming years.
5. World Health Organization. Tropical Medicine and International Health Journal.
6. I need information on the Wiamoase clinic and their treatment methods. I would like to better understand the mechanism for the parasite. I need to research more treatment methods. It would be helpful to research more on the effects of local ecology on malaria transmission. I would like to find out if any professors are working on developing a malaria vaccine at BYU or near Wiamoase.
25 Questions Assignment
My 25 questions are based on the assumption that my research topic will be infant ( < 5 yrs old) mortality due to malaria.
1. How am I going to design my research to most effectively address this issue?
2. Are there enough infant deaths due to malaria in/near Wiamoase for me to gather sufficient data?
3. Are there death certificate records available to look up to help me find people to interview?
4. Is interviewing families that have had an infant die due to malaria the best way to gather my data?
5. If interviewed, will subjects be willing to talk about a subject that might be emotionally traumatic for them? If they are not easily willing, is there a way I can ethically entice to share information with me?
6. If there are no death records to look up can I simply use networking and establishing contacts to find subjects to interview?
7. Will there be enough infants coming into the clinic because of malaria infections for me to use the clinic as a resource for finding subjects?
8. Will I be able to tape record interviews so that I can be more participative during the conversation instead of writing frantically the entire time?
9. How many subjects do I need in order to make a good sample group?
10. What time of day will be best to be conducting interviews?
11. Will I have enough time to volunteer at the clinic and conduct enough interviews?
12. How much time will it take to transcribe/code my interview notes each day?
13. How will traveling from appointment to appointment how much time I have to do interviews?
14. Will I be able to set appointments for interviews or is it best to just show up and hope subjects are home and available?
15. Will I be completely dependent on a translator during appointments or will I have learned enough Twi to at least small talk with subjects?
16. How can I incorporate new questions that I feel are important into my interviewing even if I have already gotten through half of my participants? Should I just stick to the same question set so I can treat my entire sample group the same or will it be better to change questions and get better data from a few subjects if I feel it is important?
17. How can I best develop my questions before I leave so that I don’t waste time in the field finding out which questions are actually useful?
18. How many questions should I ask during interviews?
19. Will I be able to afford to take a translator with me every time I go out to interview? How expensive are they?
20. How will I maintain the proper level of professionalism in my interviews while building enough rapport to get good answers from subjects? Is it important to develop rapport with subjects?
21. Would it be cheaper and easier to get a bike and ride to appointments rather than take a taxi or bus everywhere? Are bikes available to buy there?
22. When finding subjects, how do I make my sample as random as possible while maintaining some level of convenience for me?
23. How can I incorporate different income levels into my sample?
24. Will I just have to take what I can get when finding participants or can I be selective in my sample?
Source Document Analysis Worksheets
Source Document Analysis Worksheets
Source Document Analysis Worksheet
Ahorlu, Collins; Dunyo, Samuel; Afari, Edwin; Koram, Kwadwo; Nkrumah, Francis | May 1997 | |||
Author’s name (last, first) | Publication date | |||
Malaria-related beliefs and behavior in southern Ghana: implications for treatment, prevention and control | ||||
Title | ||||
Tropical Medicine and International Health | Volume 2, No. 5, pp 488-499 | |||
Book series OR Journal | Location and publisher OR volume, issue, pages | |||
- What is the source’s stated purpose (the argument or thesis)?
By exploring two ecological zones in southern Ghana, the researchers found that precautionary measures against malaria such as bed net usage were not common while the use of insecticide sprays as well as burning herbs and natural remedies was common. There is also a need for a strong educational component to be incorporated into the Malaria Action Plan to correct misconceptions about malaria transmission.
- What evidence does the author provide to support his or her main argument? How is the author attempting to logically prove his or her thesis and how does this affect the organization of the document?
The authors have conducted research in two communities and use their results as support of their main argument. They also cite many other authors and researchers when drawing conclusions at the end of their article. The organization is very clear since the introductory, background, methods, results and discussion sections are given in that order respectively.
- Who is the audience? What does the author assume the audience already knows about the topic?
The audience is quite broad since the researchers give enough introductory information to educate the reader about malaria. The authors assume the reader has a basic knowledge of epidemiological and sociological research methods, but most other specifics are explained.
- Describe the author’s methods (i.e. how does the author know what he or she knows)? In your opinion were they appropriate why or why not?
Two communities were studied, six focus groups were selected in each community, eight to ten participants in each focus group. The participants were selected by a stratified sample including parents of different ages, sexes and educational backgrounds. Focus group discussions were held in each group to explore the knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and practices of the community in regards to malaria.
A household survey of parents with children age 1-9 years was conducted using a personal interview questionnaire. This sample group was randomly selected from the community and was 50% of the households on a housing list of the community.
A total of 125 children aged 1-9 were selected from the households that were surveyed and were followed up on once a week for three months to check for symptoms of malaria/fever. In depth interviews were conducted with the caretakers of children identified with a history of malaria/fevers.
In my opinion these methods were appropriate. Their sample sizes seemed large enough to represent the population. All samples were either random or stratified. The only questionable method was the diagnosis of malaria since the article states that the “parasitological aspects of the home diagnosis of malaria will be published elsewhere.”
- To what other sources (theorist, researchers, artists) does the author refer? Explain the specific ideas the author draws upon from these other sources to support his or her own argument (the theoretical framework).
Many scientific journals were referred to such as the African Journal of Health Sciences and the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. The authors draw conclusions at the end of their article about the possible solutions to problems found in the communities awareness and prevention of malaria. Most of the sources referred to have to do with the effectiveness of these solutions as have been documented by other researchers. Also, other similar studies were referred to from other locations.
- What are the connections between this source and your project? How useful or applicable is this source’s approach to your own project? How is yours new and different?
I have found this article to have a lot of connections to my project. The researchers evaluated perceptions of malaria treatment, prevention and control and implied possible solutions for two communities in southern Ghana. I want to propose precautionary measures to prevent infant mortality due to malaria in a Wiamoase, but will have to follow their framework of evaluating perceptions of malaria in the community first. My project is new and different because it is in a different ecological and sociological zone.
Source Document Analysis Worksheet
Adongo, Philip; Kirkwood, Betty; Kendall, Carl | April 2005 | |||
Author’s name (last, first) | Publication date | |||
How local community knowledge about malaria affects insecticide-treated net use in northern Ghana | ||||
Title | ||||
Tropical Medicine and International Health | Volume 10, No. 4, pp 366-378 | |||
Book series OR Journal | Location and publisher OR volume, issue, pages | |||
- What is the source’s stated purpose (the argument or thesis)?
Through a variety of interviewing techniques it was found that biomedical knowledge of malaria was limited in communities regarding malaria prevention through bednets although large scale trials of bednet usage have reduced child mortality.
- What evidence does the author provide to support his or her main argument? How is the author attempting to logically prove his or her thesis and how does this affect the organization of the document?
The evidence provided by the author is in the form of coded data from interviews and surveys from a sample group. Since the thesis
- Who is the audience? What does the author assume the audience already knows about the topic?
The authors assume their audience knows very little of the problem they are addressing which is the understanding of communities regarding bednet usage to prevent malaria. It is assumed that the audience has a basic understanding of epidemiology and sociological research methods.
- Describe the author’s methods (i.e. how does the author know what he or she knows)? In your opinion were they appropriate why or why not?
Two Districts of the Upper East Region, Ghana, were studied in two phases. The first phase was an anthropological assessment of the community to investigate local household practices and their consequences for health. This phase gathered qualitative data from focus group discussions including bednet users, former users and non-users. This phase also included in depth interviews with mothers of children younger than five year, couples, healers and bednet vendors. Interviews were transcribed and entered into a database where it was sorted and searched for recurring keywords within major themes. The second phase consisted of a structured survey to collect information of the community’s knowledge of malaria and related illnesses.
- To what other sources (theorist, researchers, artists) does the author refer? Explain the specific ideas the author draws upon from these other sources to support his or her own argument (the theoretical framework).
Many scientific journals were referred to such as Journal of Biosocial Science and Social Science and Medicine. These sources are mainly used to validate claims made by the researchers in regards to general public understanding of malaria symptoms and bednet usage among others.
- What are the connections between this source and your project? How useful or applicable is this source’s approach to your own project? How is yours new and different?
This article is connected to my research project because they are investigating the perceptions of communities in regards to a method of malaria prevention, bednet usage. My research project will investigate possible precautionary methods (which could include bednet usage) to prevent malaria in the community of Wiamoase.
