My research workload was small in Week 51. I spent most of my time contacting research participants, shopping for Christmas goods, and cleaning the kitchen, dining area, and bathroom. On Tuesday, my supervisor invited me to lunch. It was a pleasure to have a nice lunch with her before I departed for fieldwork. In our read more

One of the research participants suggested I increase the font size of the consent forms to make them easier to read. I changed the size from 11 pt to 14 pt and the line spacing from single to 1.2. I had used the original English format, but academic documents tend to be written in small read more

It is hard to believe that December is already upon us, with the end of the year just ahead. How quickly time passes! This week, I had my last supervision meeting of 2017 and received much advice on how to prepare for my fieldwork, observations, and focus groups. (I ended up including focus groups in read more

I made some methodological amendments to my research. I had planned to conduct interviews and focus groups for qualitative data collection, but decided not to include focus groups and to devote my fieldwork to observing and recording real-life clinical consultations. The main reason for this amendment is that my fieldwork must align with my participants’ read more

I have tried to write for 2 hours a day, which has given me many ideas, enough to clarify the methodology section and to draft the outlines and some sections of Chapter 2. I also had a Skype meeting with a Japanese doctor to ask some technical questions about clinical practice. His responses to my read more

I keep hitting a wall whenever I try to demonstrate that my methodology section aligns precisely with my research objectives. My supervisor has mentioned that this can be one of the greatest challenges for any researcher, and I am beginning to see why. Still, I must overcome before I begin the main data collection in read more

The biggest achievement in Week 44 was initiating contact with prospective participants for my research. On 1st November, when I started sending emails to the participants, I was already nervous and uneasy, because I could only obtain the data with their voluntary help and support. As of 4th November, I have received positive responses from read more