Summary Weeks 3 & 4

Holidays are always a strange time in academia, and particularly so at Walden, because we don’t technically get any time off. Add to that – two instructors got ill and you have a class pushing along under the momentum already established. The past 2 weeks students have been writing drafts of their literature reviews. There have been many common writing issues, such as not citing a source for statements or facts, and not addressing the "so what?" and "who cares?" questions. But they appear to be off to a good start on the process.

I read an interesting book on the oldest old on my trip to visit my children that I thought I would share:

Loe, M. (2011). Aging our way: Lessons for living from 85 and beyond. Oxford Press.  

The book is written by a sociologist and is basically her qualitative research, in which she interviewed 30 oldest old in Albany, NY. She has a slightly different focus than a psychologist, but it is surprising how similar some of her interviewees are to ours.

Happy New Year everyone!
Lee Stadtlander

Changing perceptions of healthcare

This week, our students are working on their various sections of the Introduction. One such section pertains to perceptions/changes in those perceptions of the oldest old with regard to healthcare.

This has me thinking about the oldest old individuals I have known relative to their health care and I cannot help but recall the sense of powerlessness I witnessed. Granted, these were my grandparents at a time in life when their bodies were failing them in serious ways - but I cannot help but wonder what it actually feels like to have one's physical body (and perhaps, knowledge of one's psychological body, too) deteriorating as one wonders about how he/she will manage health care. Obviously, worries about health care/funding of care are individual and certainly some do not have to worry about the particular issue of access to care. My grandparents all had sufficient/very good health care - so the powerlessness to which I refer is not about whether or not they would be able to access care. Rather, it was the simple powerlessness of not knowing when the body would simply give up.

Some of my grandparents had multiple heart attacks at older ages, before they passed away. I can only imagine how stressful those experiences were with regard to their individual perceptions of healthcare; how those experiences must have helped morph/shape perceptions based on a previously more robust physical self.

This remains a very compelling area of study for me – I am at a point where I can think of numerous ‘Pathways and Gatekeepers: Moderating, Mediating, and Proximal Processes’ as Poon and Cohen-Mansfield (2011) put it re- variables and influencing factors in the relationship between oldest old and their well being.
My head leans toward the social psychological models to try to make sense of these variables/influencing factors, such as the study of attitudes and personal bias – but these are just few of a potentially large field of factors. I am glad to see this field of study receiving more attention.

AES

Poon, L.W. & Cohen-Mansfield, J. (Eds.). (2011). Understanding Well-Being in the Oldest Old. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Summary Week 2

This week students were asked to develop a literature review outline for the article we will write. After a few days it became apparent that they didn't understand what was needed. We held a special lab meeting on Thursday night in which we laid out a plan for the outline and asked students to sign for sections of the literature review. In the third week they will begin writing up their sections.

We have finally received all of our transcripts from the interviews and I have been working on analyzing some of the interview questions. It always amazes me how long it takes to do so! Qualitative analysis is very labor intensive; it is not a fast method! If you want to get a project done quickly – quantitative (i.e., surveys) are much faster! However, interviews provide such rich data that it is hard for me not to collect it!

Things will be tricky over the next few weeks – holidays always make things slow down and I then have some family issues to deal with. Hopefully, we won’t get too behind in our posts.

Lee Stadtlander

Where to start with the Introduction!

We are diving right in to our Introduction and students are starting to post outlines for this section.

The Introduction of a Paper is much like chapter two of one's dissertation (though much shorter, to be sure). Here, our job is to 'sell' our academic argument as professionally, objectively, and logically as possible. At the end of the Intro, we want our readers to know what I want to study and test and why we need to study it - both from the perspective of the social problems involved as well as because there is a true gap in the literature/no one has studied the problem the way we are proposing to study it. Our work is original.

This can be hard to do because even though we have collected the data and therefore know the variables/study parts at hand, we have to think critically and creatively in a sense to put forth the necessary academic argument.

I often suggest to students that we want to go from general to specific in the Introduction meaning we start out by talking about the broad, far reaching social problems resulting from the issue at hand (e.g. if we don't study how the oldest old perceive their healthcare/provider, increased mortality, decreased quality of living, and increased healthcare costs may ensue). By the end of the Intro however, we want to have left the reader with a clear sense of the specific problem (questions and variables/themes of interest) under examination. Why? Well - the next section following the Intro is the Methods and in order for the reader to be able to understand our methodological choices, we had better do a very clear job of presenting the academic argument behind the methods!

If my academic argument indicates we need to study group differences in regard to elder care, then it does not make sense to see a regression in our methods section - but rather we should see an Anova, right? In other words, the Introduction must *align* with the Methods. The pieces of a research study should ideally fit together as such, like a puzzle.

This requires a lot of critical thinking and being able to conceptualize beyond the mechanics of last quarter and data collection.

Hopefully, our students are working to make this shift in mind set; it can be challenging!

AES

Summary Week 1

The first week of our third quarter! We have come a long way in the project! As Dr. Sickel mentioned, this week the students have been suggesting various possible journals for our future article. For me, it has been interesting to observe the great interest the students have in the project and the support they offer each other. We have definitely become a team; it is wonderful to watch the development of the group.

The instructors have been working behind the scenes on some projects to promote the use of virtual labs. We are doing a training session during the Miami faculty meeting in January, and have been preparing all of our materials. It feels like we have learned so much about how to develop the labs and train students, we are excited to share our knowledge with others. We are also submitting a proposal for the Annual Conference on Distance Education and Learning in August. The proposal is due in January, so we’ve been working through how best to approach a presentation.

Lee Stadtlander

Third Quarter of Lab!

Here we are, starting our third quarter of this research lab. Our week has started off our formal conversation about where/how to publish the data we have thus far. I recall when I was a graduate student, I was very eager to get a publication and this entire side of academia seemed like a big mystery that was potentially unattainable. I did eventually get that first publication but it took quite a bit of work.

In addition to setting up the classroom, we instructors have had our first instructor meeting for the quarter. I must say - one of the most enjoyable aspects of this experience (and there have been many) is working with my colleagues in such a new, unique, and flexible manner. I feel quite fortunate to be able to work with each other, support each other, and pick up where another leaves off - knowing that the same will occur for me.

It is going to be interesting to see where we are at the end of this quarter, compared to where we are now. Students have begun to list many journals as possible targets for submission and at the moment, I cannot see where the publication will go - so I look forward to seeing how this all unfolds.

One thing I do know, publishing takes time and perseverance. Hopefully, we are all up for it!

Welcome back everyone,
AES

Summary Week 12

We have completed the second quarter of the lab! This week we had our last lab conference call for the quarter. During the call our goal was to come to a resolution on the subject of the article that we are to write in the final quarter of the lab. During the previous week students proposed various topics for the paper, but most were not consistent with the data that we had available. During the call the faculty laid out the data we had available and discussed various scenarios, we came to the realization that the best solution was to go with the topic of the student poster: Physician relationships in the oldest old.

We took a new approach to making the decision, which has gotten a number of positive comments from students – we basically discussed the issues as we would in a face to face lab, and reached consensus on the topic. The students had the opportunity to hear how the faculty went about making the decision, and the issues that we felt were important.

I have collected all of the research surveys from both the lab and control students which showed a significant pattern of learning and an increase in self-efficacy in the lab students. The control students’ scores stayed at about the same level. So we have clearly shown that being in a lab increases research knowledge and research confidence over a non-applied curriculum.

We will have a week break now and be back to the lab the first week of December

Lee Stadtlander

Time for a break

Our lab is wrapping up week 12 of the quarter and we had our last lab meeting conference call for fall quarter last night. In it, we finalized our article topic (I am sure Dr. Stadtlander will elaborate on that).

It is exciting to see our work come to conclusion in this way - if not a conclusion exactly, we have certainly crossed a major milestone in deciding upon the article's focus. Next quarter, we will be working on sewing the article together with the help of all of our student researchers.

As this break coincides with Thanksgiving - it is a great time for folks to unplug and recharge so as to gear up for a strong winter quarter pace with the article.

I think Instructors appreciate the break as much as do students - it is in my humble opinion, vital in order to recharge.

AES

Summary Week 11

This week we asked students to think about topics for our paper that we will write next quarter. They have had many ideas, although we do not have enough data to use many of them for a professional article. Still, it is good to have them consider the issues.

We found this week that our posters have been accepted for Walden’s winter research symposium in Miami. The students were very excited to hear that their poster will be presented. The faculty were also asked to have a breakout session during the faculty meeting on training faculty on how to develop virtual labs.

I want to emphasize that it is very important to get your research out to the professional field. It does no good to anyone to keep your results and knowledge in a file drawer. It needs to be shared. We are trying to publicize the idea of conducting virtual labs – this is not a fad, but a viable method of collecting data and training students. We have shown the feasibility of it over multiple quarters and projects. We have demonstrated and collected data showing that students learn more by applying their knowledge in a real research project. The other benefit that is apparent, but hard to capture is the excitement and enthusiasm for research that has grown in the students. As they see how research is conducted and are assured that they can do it, their confidence has built. I particularly enjoying seeing the connections they make in the literature and suggestions for future research possibilities. It is the creative aspect that makes it enjoyable for the researcher (and for the instructor).

Lee Stadtlander

Working towards the article...

As Dr. Giles notes, we now have *lots* of data and at this point, there is always the risk of letting that wonderful fact (better than having too little data, right?) overwhelm the article formation process.

As Sternberg (2000) writes:

"There are two possible articles you can write: (a) the article you planned to write when you designed your study or (b) the article that makes the most sense now that you have seen the results. They are rarely the same; and the correct answer is (b)." (p. 4)

So our task is to find what makes the most sense and if we are lucky it will overlap with what we set out to do. As we sift through the data, it is also important to keep in mind where the data contribute most with regard to the existing literature and the existing gaps in that literature. This part of the process can be hard for students because not only does it require assimilating considerable and complex data but also because it requires that we mentally go back to the literature a bit to see where our work helps to fill a gap. Students are starting to post suggestions, based on our data and based on the literature in our lab this week – which is exciting because we start to see the end ‘product’ if you will but also because it requires that students think critically, take a risk and put their ideas out there. As an instructor, this is a very rewarding part of the process!

AES



Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.). (2000). Guide to Publishing in Psychology Journals. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

more thoughts

So much data... now what?  We are narrowing in on a topic with which to write a journal article.  It seemed like such an easy task at first: just pick something and write about it.  But as we get further into it, it is not as easy as it sounded.  We have so much data and we need to look at topics that incorporate both qualitative and quantitative data.  I think it is hard for the students to see how one piece of information informs the other.  Do the results from the heath efficacy scale inform the interview questions, or do the interview questions inform the results from the scale.  Do we match the results of the LoC with specific examples from the respondent or general interview results from all?  Do we just look at the demographic info and say that informs the interviews?  Do we analyze everything and then pick something that showed the most significance?  What do we do about the things we have found that may be significant but were not part of our original research questions?  And what about outliers, do we even mention them?

I think these tasks are much like the tasks every student must work through in the dissertation process.  What to include, what to exclude, what is important and what is not.  All the while, maintaining ones ethical obligations and scholarly work.  Not an easy task.  If one keeps in mind that they are adding to the body of literature and not attempting to prove their own hypothesis, I think it becomes easier.  Write about what actually transpired and what can be backed up by the data collected.  Remembering that data must be stored for at least 5 years after the completion of the study ( not for participant security, but to provide the raw data should someone questions your results).

So what will we write on?  That will be up to the students to decide once they look at all thee data and decide which pieces inform which other pieces and fill a gap..... Wish us luck :)

M. Giles

Summary Week 10

This week students have been exploring their choice of interview questions in the transcripts and looking for themes. They have discovered a number of themes, such as participants’ desire for their doctor to like them, and doctors do not appear to discuss typical age related changes with their patients. This is particularly interesting when you consider that many doctors blamed the person’s symptoms on age.

We had a lab conference call this week; one thing that became clear is that the online environment does not appear to be conducive to students’ asking vague questions. The students stated that they feel that they must have a specific question in mind in the classroom, and when they are not sure exactly what to ask they hesitate to post it. The faculty have been very open to questions in the lab, so this is an interesting revelation. Students in the meeting asked about basic issues such as what is the difference between a code and a theme. Yet, they had hesitated to address the issue in class. I have to wonder, what is it about writing out the question in class that feels more threatening? Perhaps in person they are more aware of others also not knowing the answer?

Again, I have come to realize the importance of having regular lab conference calls, where we all have the opportunity to share information and questions. We only have two more weeks of the quarter remaining, next quarter we begin writing up all our data for a possible journal article. I think the conference calls will be even more important next quarter, to make sure that we are all on the same page during the writing process.

 Lee Stadtlander

Summary – Week 9

This week we asked students to read through several full transcripts and consider what they learned that was different from the experience of doing the interview in person. Many students mentioned that they wished that they had slowed down and focused more on the interviewee’s responses. They felt that they often cut off something he or she was going to say. It is so important, particularly when interviewing older people to give them time to reflect on the question and think about it. Silence is often uncomfortable for the interviewer, but necessary. Several students do employment interviewing in their everyday job and indicated how different research interviewing is from it. In research interviewing you must focus on several things at one time: making sure they answered question, getting ready to ask the next question, being aware that someone else is going to hear the interview recording, and try to appreciate what the person is saying.

Some students commented that the sheer volume of data felt overwhelming. A half hour interview can often generate 20-25 single spaced spaces. Multiplied by our 35 participants, that is a great deal of information to process! Some interesting insights came from the students’ review of the transcripts: “many participants had lost their original physician to retirement or death, and had to find someone new.” Which is yet another loss for the oldest old. “Several participants mentioned that they take their aches and pains as just part of the aging process.” “Some women indicated that they no longer do GYN exams or mammograms.” We discussed that we wished we had followed up on these comments and gotten more information on why this is a case. As with all research this project is leading to more questions for future studies.

We finalized the two posters we will be submitting on the project for Walden’s Winter Research Symposium in Miami in January. The students seemed to have learned a lot from doing the poster and thinking about the project as a whole and how the pieces interconnect.

Lee Stadtlander

Research is sometimes quite unnatural in today's world

Lately, I have been doing a lot of data work in SPSS. As I get bogged down in the details of the data set, I realize how hard it is for me to pull myself out of it when I have to leave the work for other obligations. Similarly, it takes considerable effort at times, to hurl myself into this part of the work as I know it to be detailed and labor intensive.

It strikes me that such detailed work is a bit unnatural in our increasingly instantaneous lives. We tend to expect things to happen quickly and with relatively little effort. Our ability to communicate almost instantly with anyone anywhere in the world is one example.

In social psychology, there are what we call judgmental heuristics which basically represent mental shortcuts we take to save ourselves some effort, energy, resources, etc... We tend to make judgments: based on how readily we can pull up pertinent examples (availability heuristic); how similar an unknown object may be to a known entity (representativeness heuristic); and we seem to pay considerable attention to our attitudes over knowledge or facts (attitude heuristic) (Anderson, 2008).

All of this for me highlights the need to make time, space, and effort for focused work such as what needs to be done in research. In a world increasingly dependent upon technological advances making our daily lives infinitely quicker than they were even last year - this can be hard to do. In support of this is a recent article I found in Linkedin News and , titled 'Four Destructive Myths most Companies Still Live By' by Tony Schwartz.

http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=881785693&ids=0MdPwSc3AQe3wIcPASdjwTcjwUb3gOej8PcjATe2MMcjkMcjsUdPwIcPgSej4UdPsU&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod-b-ttle-68&ut=1k_OU91mKbP4Y1

The first myth Schwartz presents is Multitasking is critical in a world of infinite demand. This is a by product of a variety of factors, no doubt but due in part to our increased ability to have instant results and to physically do many things at once - if not well.

Research is a kind of critical thinking which by its nature, requires that we slow down and think well and I find myself feeling increasingly protective of it. I hope this is something our students, too, can appreciate.

AES

Anderson, E.A. (2008). The Social Animal. (10th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

thoughts

I have been thinking a lot about the ethical issues inherent in research. I believe that most students, and hopefully, all researchers know about protecting subjects. Subjects involved in studies must be informed of the purpose, length, requirements and all parts of a study prior to consenting to be in the study. This is informed consent, and protects both the participant and the researcher. Of course, there are other considerations: humane treatment, avoidance of deception, no coercion, etc. But all of these issues relate to the study participants.

I wonder how much students really look at the ethics involved in data collection. If someone marks two numbers on the same line of a survey, if they skip a question, if they do a task after the due date..... can that data be used? The simple answer is no. Of course if the survey allows for skipped questions, the researcher can simply throw out the skipped question or omit the double answer. If the response is time sensitive and results come in late, that data cannot be used. What if one of the subjects decides at the last minute that he/she does not want his/her data used? It must be thrown out even if the analysis has been completed.

I believe that student researchers sometimes forget that informed consent allows the individual to pull out of the study at any time. That really does not happen, to my knowledge, but I wonder if students think about what they would do if it did happen. I wonder if they think about what they would do if surveys that were time sensitive were submitted late? What would they do if half a survey was left incomplete?


We spend a great deal of time talking about the ethics involved in human research, but not as much about what happens once the consent form has been signed. I am wondering if more time should be spent with students talking about the ethics involved with data collection, analysis, and what can be said in a discussion of the results..... Just my thoughts...

Week 8 Summary

This week we had a lab conference call and discussed our qualitative data. The students were also told more detail about the poster for Walden’s research symposium in January in Miami. We offered the students the opportunity to develop a poster based upon our preliminary data. Eight students decided to work on it as group, we received their draft today, and they did an awesome job on it!

The faculty have also been working on their own poster on the lab and the research skills that students have learned over the two quarters they have worked with us. The data show a clear pattern of learning by the students in the research lab over the control group. Both groups showed an increase in research efficacy which we have been considering how best to explain. It may be that the control group felt involved in the project as members of the control group and their confidence increased because of that. Alternatively, this blog may have provided a window in the project that made them feel more aligned with the project.

Lee Stadtlander

Telling a Story

I greatly appreciate this week's lab reading, Chapter 8 in Sternberg's Guide to Publishing in Psychology Journals. I particularly like the part of this chapter (written by Peter Salovey) that in the context of advocating authors 'tell a story' discusses how presentation/discussion of quantitative findings can really squelch the story if not written mindfully. When we write our statistical findings using solely statistical terminology with no 'prose' (p. 125) or verbiage to provide context for those tests and statistics - we may lose the reader.

This takes effort on the author's part as it is much easier to simply dump all of the statistics out there for the reader, assuming he/she will adequately understand.

I appreciate these comments by Salovey. It is my opinion that providing reader with appropriate context is vital to academic writing and yet is very challenging for students who are trying to learn how much/how little is needed in order for the context provided to be adequate.

Providing the appropriate context for our reasoning, for our results/statistics not only enhances readability but gives us a better sense of the particular story we are trying to tell in the study at hand. I like this as I find academic writing that is less focused on prose and providing context far less compelling.

This is what I try to encourage in my students, when I remind them that each chapter of the dissertation is a story unto itself - in service of the overall one being told via the dissertation. Our goal in both dissertation and academic writing of any kind is to tell the precise story at hand in such a way that we win the reader over with our academic argument.

In this sense when, as we are currently doing, we want to combine findings from both qualitative and quantitative work, this emphasis on the overarching story – can help us consolidate the work of these two diverse approaches.

AES

Salovey, P. (2000). Results that get results: Telling a good story. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Guide to Publishing in Psychology Journals (pp. 121-132). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

For me, qualitative data is like seeing the world through someone else's eyes. When I first read the transcripts, I have no desire to analyze, understand or explain... I just allow myself to "see" the interview through the interviewee's responses. I think students, and those new to the process of qualitative analysis, know that they must do something with the responses, and they rush to define what was said, rather than listening to what was said and what was left unsaid. It is rather like reading poetry. Either one can listen for the words, the cadence, and the tone; or one can try to identify the iambic pentameter, rhymes, etc.
Qualitative analysis demands that the researcher “hear” what the subjects are saying. Several subjects may use the word “slow” in relationship to a Dr. visit. If the researcher simply is counting words or looking for similar words, He/she would miss the fact that slow for one subject is a positive: “the Dr never rushes, he is slow and deliberate” and another subject sees slow as a negative: “he never starts on time, he is always slow to his appointments with me”.
I hope students and others can see qualitative research as seeing the shared experience of the subjects. It is about experience, not numbers or quantity. I love experiencing the world through someone else’s eyes, learning how they see something inspires me to take an extra step during the day to stretch my way of knowing the world.
MG

Summary Week 7

This week students have been transcribing and coding their qualitative data. It is interesting to see how they approach this task for the first time. Even though we provided instructions, some have had a hard time understanding that you must have every word the person utters in the transcript. You need everything there in order to begin understanding the meaning of what they have said. It is not what the researcher thinks they mean – you want to get at what they actually said.

We made the offer for any students that are interested, of preparing a poster using some of the data for the Walden winter research symposium. So far, five students have expressed an interest. I think it is terrific opportunity to put together some data and see what the process is like.

I would like to publically thank Dr. Sickel for her help in the last two weeks! Dr. Giles and I have been teaching at Walden’s new virtual residency – which required considerably more time than we anticipated. Dr. Sickel kindly handled a lot of the classroom work for us, thus reducing our stress considerably. I think the virtual residency has a lot of potential, but doing anything for the first time ever – can be frustrating. We found many bugs and it required some modification in teaching techniques from the original plan. We are scheduled to teach at the next virtual residency in two weeks, hopefully this one will go smoother.

Lee Stadtlander

How much to help out?

I would like to pick up on a comment Dr. Stadtlander made in her recent blog, about how challenging it can be to know how much to help the students versus doing parts of the work ourselves. I whole heartedly agree with Dr. Stadtlander in that I often find myself debating as to how many questions I ask of our students so as to stimulate their critical thinking versus my own wanting to provide the answer so that we in fact get to the answer. I hope you will excuse this analogy, but it reminds me greatly of parenting! I go through something similar to this with our nine year old daughter. Granted, my questions meant to foster my daughter's critical thinking are more in line with: 'What do *you* think would be a healthy snack?' or 'What do *you* think it means to be a good friend' - but you get my point.

It can therefore be hard to know if/when students are getting what they need. Consequently, I find it helpful to hear from students in multiple venues (via blog, conference calls, emails, jounral entries, and in the classroom).

Another challenge I see in our work at this time is that we are working on qualitative data analysis which is much less structured, in my humble opinion, than is quantitative work. As a result of this, students can find this part of the work unclear so we continue to do our best to anchor the qualitative data analysis tasks at hand.


AES