Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Research papers...

I've never read so many research papers in my life. I have a thick stack of articles on my desk from my media theory class and I'm amazed at how quickly the pile grew over the course of the semester. Then, last week, I added some serious depth to the stack. I printed off 25 articles for my literature review and have spent the past several days reading them. My eyes are bleary from the reading, but my mind feels sharp. I love being surrounded by so much data.

So, tonight, as I organized my life for next semester, I realized that I really want to take a quantitative research course next semester. For some reason, I had it in my head that I would take qualitative, but tonight, as I flipped through dozens of pages of data, and liked what I saw, I knew that even though in-depth interviews are awesome (and I will always love them), I want to learn more about how numbers can inform decision making.

My annotated bibliography is due tomorrow, which means that I have now read and synthesized 25 research studies on media advocacy. (This is a theory that explores how public health advocates can utilize media to promote their public policy agendas.)

My two favorite articles on media advocacy are entitled: "More than a message: Framing public health advocacy to change corporate practices" and "Different perspectives: A comparison of newspaper articles to medical examiner data in the reporting of violent deaths." They are excellent and if you want to read more, ask me for my literature review next week. Then, if you really want to learn more, ask me for my research project next year.

Ahh, grad school. It's really hard. But, I love it.

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