I should have been blogging about my experience as I was going along but I have been bogged down with curriculum development for Griffith University, suffering gall stones, having surgery and attempting to settle down into an alien anti midwife culture.
The pressure to submit to ethics has increased over the last couple of weeks as I am now a little behind on my project. My peers in the program, already having achieved ethics approval, are now beginning to collect data for their research.
The problem is that although I began a literature search at the beginning of the year it has produced a number of pitfalls. I also spent a great deal of time searching for a validated tool that had already been used that I could replicate and adapt for the Australian context.
As the picture suggests I aim to investigate men's experience of supporting women through labour and birth in the Australian context.
What I would like to share with you is an 'idiots guide to a research project' and provide you with some handy hints and tips that have given me my 'ahah' moments these past two weeks.
Writing my biggest stumbling block
Three years ago I decided to commence post graduate study with Otago Polytechnic with the career ambition of becoming a midwifery lecturer. I completed eight post graduate papers and it took me two years to gain a post graduate midwifery diploma with merit. I maintained a B average. However during one of my papers I attempted to change my style of writing in an attempt to sound very studious and clever. This was a huge mistake and provided me with feedback which has had a powerful hindering effect ever since. After that paper I was told I couldn't 'write'.
I never have had a difficulty with writing before I gained a good grade at English and English literature O level at school. I had never before been criticised about my sentence structure or language.
This is a burden and anxiety I have carried into my PHCRED project. The difference is I am now an 'honorary research fellow' with Melbourne University and MUST write in a scientific manner.
I am of the opinion SCIENCE and MIDWIFERY don't mix. It is like oil and water. I have frustrated my project supervisor, a bestselling author, with my emotive style of writing. She in turn has made me feel like I suffer some sort of disability when it comes to writing in a scientific way. All in all there have been more moments of despair so far than there has been highlights. Culturally science and midwifery aren't an easy mix. This has been identified by the pioneer of culturally appropriate care giver, Ramsden in her thesis on cultural safety where she quotes an author Johnstone who warns that, “researchers who are brave enough to write about their own emotions risk being ridiculed, dismissed and marginalised” (1999, p. 26).
Guide to language
The first of my tips on the 'idiots guide to scientific writing' is to examine and identify words used in articles that you may be reading.
I now read an article or report and highlighter in hand colour in specific words. I was told 'describe' was a bad word to use and wasn't scientific. I now have stuck to the side of my computer a thesaurus list of words to use whenever I have the urge to write 'the study describes'.
If you are drawing from the results section of a paper then the acceptable words to use are:
Reported
Found
show(ed)
conclude(d)
indicate (d)
Results
identify(s)
Present(ed)
Findings demonstrate
If you are commentating from the discussion part of a research paper then use the words:
Suggest
so and so, state(s)
This is just number one of my tip for today!
References
Ramsden, I. (1999, March). Nursing research in New Zealand: We do have something to say. Tino rangatiratanga for nursing, through research. Paper presented to the New Zealand Nurses Organisation Conference, Palmerston North, New Zealand.
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