Blog 9

1. Identify your focus.  This is a general statement of what you are interested in

2. Identify your research question:  What in particular do you want to find out?  State your question in as specific terms as you can: the age/identity of your subjects, the location of your study, the particular activities/features you will focus on. 

Your research question is really a group of related questions, stated in specific terms, where you narrow in on what in particular you want to learn about in your study.

3. Who has studied this question and what do they say.  For this prompt - mention any article that you have read where researchers have explored answers to your question.  If you can't find any articles - tell me something about what you searched for and what you found (even if it wasn't right).

4.What do I need to find out to answer this question?  This prompt is to help you clarify and deepen your research question.

5.  What do I need to do to gather information that will answer my question?

 This prompt is to help you think about how to design your study.  Who will you work with?  Where?  what will you do together?

1.     My focus is: Medical in a discourse community. The interaction between the physician and the patient. How the physician speaks to the patient opposed to the patient’s family. How or if the patient complies in regards to the physicians regimen. How non-compliance not only involves with the way the physician is with the patient, but it extends to family, cultural factors, etc.

2.      The question I would like to find out would be: The difference between an experts opinion, such as referrals or opinions of other colleagues and the compliance of the patient and how the family influences both the expert as well as the patient. I would focus on a subject that is 58 years of age. The location of my study would be in a doctor’s office, as well as in my living room. I will focus on the language used by the physician, the body language of the patient, as well as the way the physician speaks differently between the patient’s families compared to the patient herself.

3.My article is written by Ellen L. Barton- The interactional practices of referrals and accounts in medical discourse: expertise and compliance.

4.      I need to conduct an interview with the patient, asking her several of questions and if she has been complying with the doctors treatment.

5.      I would need to not only conduct an interview, but also do an ethnographic study. I will ask questions for both the physician as well as the patient, I will keep notes of things I remember, my jottings, head notes and my observations, all of which deal with the ethnographic study in the doctors office.

I would need a consent form so I could present it to the doctor in order to conduct my ethnographic study. Other than that I would like to work with you in building up my foundation for my paper.