When I finally turned in my IRB Proposal on Monday morning, it took about 30 minutes for the stress (that had been my week-long companion) to leave and be replaced by a dawning realization of the enormity of what I'm about to go do in Ghana.
Today Corrine, Deidre and I will be putting together our information so we can send off for our visas and my immunizations and vaccinations appointment is set for Friday. How did the entire semester fly by? I can't believe that in a month and a half I'll be headed from St. Louis to Ghana. And once I get there, how will I conduct my study?
The last few days I've had less on my plate with all my classes, so I've had time to delve into my sources and attempt to cement my methods. When I do research on my own, I tend to read on a topic and then try to expand my research to incorporate what I learned; that quickly gets overwhelming and I hope that in my research over the next few days I'll be able to take those lessons and instead find a way to apply them so my methods more specific.
I think my methods will change once I get to Wiamoase, because--like many people have explained to me--it's impossible to really grasp what I CAN study until I'm in the field. So what in my preparation will be useful for me, useful in the field, or a waste? I think that a lot of the research I've done is time consuming but informing me in important ways. I read last night through Robert Chamber's Participatory books, and it helped me feel like I understood the reasoning behind participatory research/evaluate--since that's an important part of my research, what I learned (the advantages of participatory to survey research, the challenges of evaluation without input from local people, the values and ideals behind participatory research) is helping me prepare. Some of my research will be useful in the field, especially the studies that deal with rural or health and development. The problems or challenges that these studies identify (access to the clinic, costs associated with clinic use, challenges of education, availability of clinic workers, efficiency, and equity of clinics) help me prepare my methods now to explore those challenges.
But what questions can I ask? Will they understand the meaning of my question? Will I even find anything? Will I find too much? How will I focus my study? Can I focus it more now if I don't know the challenges faced in this specific community? I've never conducted real research or interviews before, I've never done anything like this, and I don't know how to prepare my methods beyond more hours of time consuming research that may or may not be helping me prepare.
Don't even get me started on the questions I have about culture, foreign travel, illnesses and being a stranger in a community I want to do research in. These are concerns everyone has, but it's hard to deal with them when they loom in the near future and I don't have answers yet.
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