Please vote in the poll on whether to invite the master's students to the Writing Club

Click the link to vote in the poll. You can choose as many responses as you like (in other words, multiple response!)

http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=504f5854e4b0ce84916c13a3

KINSHIP NETWORK OF THAI ELDERLY IN A RURAL AREA: CASE STUDY OF NANGRONG DISTRICT, BURIRAM PROVINCE

This abstract is for my thesis. Please kindly give comments and suggestions. Thank you very much.

KINSHIP NETWORK OF THAI ELDERLY IN A RURAL AREA: CASE STUDY OF NANGRONG  DISTRICT, BURIRAM PROVINCE
        This study investigates the kin preferences of elderly in rural Thailand, the availability of kinship networks who potentially are elderly's care givers, and factors affecting the availability of potential kin living within a village. The longitudinal dataset collected in Nang Rong district in Buriram province, Thailand is used. The survey at three levels of individual, household, and community has been conducted in 1984, 1994, and 2000 by the Nang Rong Project. This three-wave longitudinal study provides the essential demographic data, the complete social network data among kin, and geographic locations of dwelling units. The dataset allows a researcher to investigate demographic change as well as kinship network during the period. The quantitative approach was used to analyze the dataset. Besides, the qualitative approach was conducted during April 2012 to find the explanation for quantitative findings. In addition, the integrated disciplines including social network, spatial analysis, statistical method are introduced to this demographic study.
    It has been found that most of the present generation of elderly in rural Thailand were able to access their preferred kin in a village to take care of them for various types of assistance and support: meal preparation, personal care, transportation, financial support, and emotional support. Factors affecting the availability of kin preference depends upon types of support and gender of care takers. Spouse, daughter, son, grandson, and granddaughter are on the top ranks of kin preference. Siblings and neighbors are helpful when their close kin are not available.
    In Theravada Buddhism culture, caring older parents is an obligation of children, especially a daughter, to pay back their gratitude of nurturing in childhood. The necessary assistance for the elderly's daily living, which is meal preparation and personal care, are considered female tasks. Regarding matrilocal residential norm existing in the northeastern Thailand, a daughter plays an important role as a care giver. The most concern of elderly care in the future is that the next generation who are becoming the elderly may lack of kin taking care of them because the percentage of kin availability in a village dramatically dropped about 18 percent. Most of existing kin in the village are in school age or work in the agricultural sector who are more likely to migrate for some reasons.

Writing Club Meeting 8

Progress of group members

·         Nara has found an example of a paper that he wrote in his past when he worked for an NGO. He describes his writing style as “dry”. We’ll take a look at this in a future meeting and try to liven it up.

·         Anne has become an Ajarn since our last meeting (congratulations!) She’s now writing a report in English and working on the Centenarian website.

·         Reena attended the regional M&E workshop and has been working on a proposal on cross-border marriage.

·         Jongjit’s paper that we discussed earlier has been accepted at the ACS 2012 conference in Pattaya (congratulations). She will have a progress report presentation of her dissertation on Sept. 14.

·         Suwanya participated in the meeting via skype but did not have a microphone, so we couldn’t hear her. Hope that she can get one by next time.

·         Kerry is working on the special issue of JPSS, she has edited six articles and now has two articles plus the forward to write.

Guest speaker: Aj. Aphichat on “Targeting Journals for Publication”

Aj. Aphichat discussed several considerations for selecting a journal for your research papers:

•       Impact factor: Usually you should aim as high as possible, at least 1.0.

•       On-line and fee: Some journals (such as the online journals) charge as much as $1500. IPSR can help you with these fees if your article is accepted.

•       Journal interest & specialization: Consider the type of articles that a journal publishes, for example how much theory is usually included? Does the journal encourage qualitative work, or not?

•       Journal styles and convenience: Will you have to do a lot of work to have your article conform to the journal format—for example, the references?

•       Your area or your logo career: How do you want to be labeled—as a sociologist? Demographer? Someone who does research on public health?

•       Concentrated: You might want to publish within a narrow range of journals to establish yourself in a field: for example, in demography, in AIDS research, etc.

•       Diversified: You might want to make sure that you publish widely, in different fields. You might be a “duck”: can swim a little, fly a little, walk a little.

•       Romance: You may dream of publishing in a certain journal and aspire to that.

•     Aim high: Don’t be afraid to submit to a very good journal. You will get useful reviews, even if the paper is rejected; you can then improve the article and scale down. The lesser journals may give you a “nonsense” review that is not useful to you.

Aj. Aphichat then told us the history of an article he’s been trying to publish for some time:

The talk was extremely useful for us to think through how to choose a journal, and to remind us to be persistent!

Writing Club Meeting 6

We had a small but interesting meeting this time. Nara joined and mentioned that he would like some help in making his writing less dry. He will bring some examples to a future meeting. Both Cartoon and Jongjit submitted abstracts to the blog and we had time to discuss Cartoon's. 

I shared some resources from the internet that I have found. First, here is an academic writing club that you can join, for $70 per month:

http://academicwritingclub.com/

It has many of the same functions as our club, but allows you to log how many minutes you spend writing and to chat with others about problems with writing. You also receive personal coaching.

I have found this site on procrastination interesting:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay

As you procrastinate by reading through the site, you can find many many explanations for why you do so.

Finally, here are some good resources for specific questions on grammar and writing:

http://www.grammarbook.com/

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

Next time Aj. Aphichat will talk about how to target journals to publish your articles.

Gap of Knowledge

This study focus on morthers' work related to infant morbidity and mortality in Thailand. In the modern world  change the informal working mother in agriculturer to be formal worker in industrial and service sectors, this will effect the difference health status of infant. the debate between absent from motherhood(breastfeeding) and working for income to provide more health service and living standard of family which one is the stronger positive or negative effect on infant morbidity and mortality. This dataset is fruitful data in prospective cohort design especially for analyze cohort and longitudinal analysis to explore this relationship. It never explain in this topic. the causal relationship between mothers' work and infant morbidity and mortality was not well explain clearly. Difference location, difference culture and difference context of each area can also show difference infant morbidity and mortality. Therefore, this study would like to investigate this relationship )

(More update soon)

Please feel free to give comments and suggestion.... Please

Hypothetical Orders of Kin Preferences for Elderly’s Support in Thailand

This study explored the kin preferences of Thai elderly for five types of assistance and support including meal preparation, personal care, transportation, financial support, and mental support. The qualitative method of focus group discussion was conducted in seven villages geographically across Nang Rong district which is located in the northeastern Thailand. For each village, male and female elderly whose age 60 and over were interviewed separately. As a result of the discussion, kin preferences were ranked in the first four orders by gender of elderly and types of support. It was found that male and female elderly’s preferences were slightly different regarding gender tasks and the traditionally matrilocal norm. However, the closest kin were firstly considered. Siblings and neighbors played significant roles when their close kin were not available. These hypothetical orders of kin preferences should be taken into account in order to provide the elderly’s long term care efficiently and sentimentally.

Please kindly give comments and suggestions for this abstract. Thank you very much. 

Writing Club Meeting 5

At this meeting we had a guest speaker, Hannah Collins from The Language Center at the Faculty of Graduate Studies. She spoke to us about preparing the English abstract of your dissertation for the graduate school. Her presentation is here:

Preparing Your Abstract Presentation

Click on the link and then you can download it. Unfortunately I can't upload the file directly to the blog.

Next meeting will be Wednesday July 11 at 13:30. Please feel free to make suggestions on the agenda. I'll give more information on plans for the meeting in next week's reminder email.

MOTHERS’ WORK RELATED TO INFANT MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY IN THAILAND

Infant mortality is an indicator reflecting the development and health levels of countries. Due to reduce trend of mortality, morbidity is significant concern from policy maker, public health workers and demographers. Since a mother is the key person to lessen health problem of her children in early life, the relationship between mother and child in those years might affect an infant’s illness and death as well as their later life. According to Mosley and Chen’s analytical framework(1984), Briggs’ multiple exposures multiple effects(2003), and UNICEF’s the basic and underlying causes of undernutrition(2007) are the most prominent key for the study of child survival in developing countries, this study was based on them. Due to the socio-economic development of Thailand, increasing proportions of working age mothers share the family’s burden. As a result, the work of mothers could influence their infants’ illness. This study will examine the causal relationship of mothers’ work on infant morbidity and infant mortality in Thailand. Within the mothers working activities, the mother’s employment status, and her occupational categories might show causal relationship with health of infants. To examine this relationship, the prospective cohort study of Thai children (PCTC) was employed. The benefits of this study are: an intensify role of state to support working mother in the work place; enhance role of conventional medicine to help decrease number of adverse infant health; and increase role of family for understand the balancing between infant care and working status of mothers. 

By Cartoon (Abstract of thesis proposal defense examination on June, 28, 2012)

WC Meeting 4

We had a small but interesting meeting on Wednesday with a couple of new members. Aj. Kerry talked about Becker's book (for the last time) and his recommended 2-step approach to writing:

1. Write everything that comes to mind about your topic without referring to notes. Type as fast as you can!
2. Rewrite

The rewriting step can be like a word puzzle as you are simply thinking about writing--not about the work itself. It's like hiring yourself as an editor!

Next time, Ann will try to get one of the people in charge of reviewing dissertation abstracts at the graduate school to come to speak to us. This should be very useful and interesting, and we will publicize it to attract new members.

If I forgot anything, please blog!

WC Meeting 3

We had a short, disrupted and distracted meeting last Wednesday! I forgot to remember to send a reminder, and it was also a hard week for many people as it is semester break. Nevertheless, it's nice to see our core group of regular members.

Here's a brief summary of our reported progress and commitments for next time:

• Aj. Aphichat wants to share experiences with publishing. And Aj. Pramote came to see what happens at Writing Club. They both left early, but we hope they'll come back next time.
• Aj. Manasigan talked about how she used journal writing to work out some issues that she has. She will try to do a blog entry on this. 
• Aj. Kerry is making some progress with her long overdue paper with Aj. Aphichat. They targeted a journal and Kerry ran some multinomial logistic regression models. Without the Writing Club, there would be no progress at all; because I have to report to the group, I make sure to make a bit of progress!
• Jongjit wrote an excellent abstract for a GIS conference. We used this as an example to do some editing. She'll continue working on this for next time.
• Suchitra wasn't able to give us a report on the Becker book this time, but she will do it next time.
• Cartoon shared that she thinks the blog is difficult for the Thai students to use because they feel self-conscious about their writing. I am trying to think of ways to overcome this, because I think the blog can be a useful tool. Nevertheless, I'm happy to edit abstracts or other short writing examples via email if you feel more comfortable.

We will skip one meeting and meet again on June 13th. I will remember to remind next time. 

Abstract for a GIS conference

Please feel free to post your comments on this abstract, thank you very much.

SPATIAL PATTERNS OF KINSHIP NETWORK OF THE ELDERLY IN RURAL THAILAND

This study aims to investigate the patterns of kinship network of the elderly in rural Thailand with a case study of Nang Rong district in Buriram Province. Traditionally, Thai elderly in rural areas rely on their kin as care givers in various types of support such as meal preparation, personal care, and transport. Thus the elderly who can reach support provided by kin, especially children, should live with well-being. Without the information of existing kinship network who can be care givers, local health care services would not meet the actual requirement of which the number and proportion of elderly are increasing. To overcome this problem, the pattern of kinship network indicating geographic distribution of child-parent ties should be revealed.

Individual and household data integrated to geographic coordinates of households collected in 2000 are used to analyze by three approaches. First, social network approach is used to retrieve child-parent ties. Second, spatial statistics of point distance and distance band from neighbor count are to calculate geographic distance between the elderly's resident to the nearest child and average distance among neighbors. Third, the results are supported by qualitative study launched in the study area in April 2012.

It is found that more than 90 percent of elderly have at least one child in the village. Approximately, 40 and 20 percent of elderly co-reside with daughter and son respectively. Average distance among two neighbors is significantly related to the presence of their children in the village. On the average of nearest children, daughters are approximately 220 meters away from their parents, while sons live about 50 meters further than daughters do. This finding, supported by qualitative study, corresponds to matrilocal  tradition.

A systematic review in children: challenging in some aspects.

a abstract of systematic review said "Background Few longitudinal studies of children have taken place in the developing world, despite child mortality being concentrated there. This review summaries the methodologies and main outcomes of longitudinal studies of pre-school children (0 to 59 months) in the World Health Organization’s South East Asia (SEA) and Eastern Mediterranean (EM) Regions. Methods A systematic search of literature using pre-defined criteria revealed 7863 papers. After application of quality criteria, 120 studies were selected for analysis. Results The search revealed 83 studies in the SEA region and 37 in the EM region, of which 92 were community-based and 8 facility based. Objectives were diverse but topics included growth (n = 49 studies), mortality (n = 28), nutrition (n = 24), and infectious diseases (n = 33). Only 12 studies focused on non-communicable diseases. Duration ranged from 7 to 384 months. Measurements included anthropometric (n = 56 studies), socioeconomic (n = 50) and biological sampling (n = 25), but only one study was DNA-based. Conclusion Biobanks have emerged as the most successful approach to generating knowledge about disease causes and mechanisms. Little of this is possible to undertake in the in SEA or EM regions, however. Further longitudinal studies of young children with DNA sampling should be set up to better understand determinants of diseases in low income countries" (McKinnon & Campbell, 2011)

some chalenging topics are:

Surprisingly, it was found 3 studies in Thailand and neighboring countries. It might be different definition of South East Asia. Since we know that South East Asia regions have 10 countries, this study may include Bangladesh, India, Iran, and Pakistan within this article broader definitions of South East Asia countries. 

Moreover, the authors choose only south East Asia and Eastern Mediterranean area because they write on their first objective that they would like to review for SEA and EM offices of World Health Organization(WHO). This is not fair for other systematic reviews, which always review all regions in the world. This aspect might be alternative aspect that I have never seen.

Are those birth cohort studies benefit for biobank? Why these authors really concern on genetic perspective?  It seem to me that  these authors would like to tell us that the birth cohort studies is purposed for genetic study or this birth cohort studies should emphasize to the future genetic perspective rather than these 4 simple outcomes: growth, nutrition, morbidity and mortality. It should be gain advantage if researches can give more recommendation on the genetic and environmental perspectives.

Note: Cartoon write this blog due to her literature review process. She is going to use prospective cohort data which focus  in the idea of morbidity and mortality in the first year of life. She think that this article related to her topic.

References

McKinnon, R., & Campbell, H. (2011). Systematic review of birth cohort studies in South East Asia and Eastern Mediterranean regions. Journal of Global Health, 1(1) Retrieved May 7,2012, from  http://jogh.org/documents/issue201101/10-Article%20McKinnon.pdf.

Commitments for the 3rd meeting

Aj. Manasigan: to do some creative writing
Jongjit: to write an abstract for the GIS conference
Cartoon: to work on operational definitions for variables
Kerry: to meet with Aj. Aphichat about the paper and expand the outline

Nick's talk on argumentation

The line of argument is the most important part of any academic research. This is called a "thesis" (though the term is often confused with the dissertation). It is a proposition that you put forward and can defend; or may be a set of interlocking propositions.

Writing is thinking and recording, and is a psychological exercise. You learn by writing, and should thus think of writing as a process rather than the last step in completing the dissertation.

Saving writing for the last minute is a mistake that we all make; we end up writing when our minds are tired. We should give writing greater priority. Also do not save the conclusion for the end; write it at the beginning, and revise it later.

Exploratory writing is a technique where we allow ourselves complete freedom in writing up ideas. This helps the thinking process and allows us to be creative.

For PhD students, Nick suggests keeping a journal to record your thesis ideas, and to keep writing down ideas continually.

Some questions to ask about your writing:
--Is it engaging for the reader?
--Does it invite a response, or dialog?
--Does it have aesthetic merit?

Notes on Meeting 2

Again we had a lucky group of 9 for our second meeting; but this time, 4 ajarns and 5 PhD students.


--6 of us attended for the 2nd time and all of us accomplished our commitment from the previous meeting. Congratulations to Cartoon, Suchita, Jongjit, Suwana, Nick & Kerry!


--People had problems getting access to the blog and posting. Kerry promised to move the blog to Google blogging (Blogger).


--Suchita (as per her commitment) started reading the Becker book, Writing for Social Scientists. Becker gives the following tips:

• Don't write the introduction first. Instead write all your ideas down without worrying about the structure of the paper or whether it makes sense. This way you don't lose track of your original ideas before doing your literature review and getting other people's comments.
• Edit by your ear: your writing should sound right to you. 
• Appreciate people's comments without getting defensive or upset.

Suchita will read more of the book for the next meeting.

--Nick spoke about Argumentation, which I will write about in the next post.

Our next meeting is on May 16 at 13:30 in room 324.

If I forgot anything, please comment!

Impact factor listing

Posted on April 22, 2012 by krichter99

I found a listing of social science journals by impact factor that might be useful:

http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/infoserv/journal/list.html?s=if

Our commitments for Meeting 2:

Posted on April 21, 2012 by ipsrwritingclub

Ramesh & Chunjira: title and conceptual framework for an article

Ann: will be at PAA meetings next time

Cartoon: new conceptual framework for dissertation

Orapin: to think about writing for different audiences

Suchita: to skim through the books on writing

Nick: to speak about argumentation in research writing

Jongjit: to set up a framework for analysis

Kerry: to complete the outline for a paper I am writing

Ramesh’s tips on publishing

Posted on April 21, 2012 by krichter99

Ramesh gave us some concise tips on how to be productive in publishing papers in journals:

• Make sure that every paper you write is a publishable paper. When you have a term paper assigned, choose a unique topic and write the paper in journal article style.
• Choosing the title of the paper and defining the objectives is very important.
• When reviewing research from other countries, think about whether it would be a good topic for your own country, and see if there is similar data available.
• Use your own university or workplace as a survey site.
• Learn from your reviews and use them to improve your paper. If the paper is rejected, be persistent: keep improving and re-submitting to another journal.
• Don’t sleep, or if you do sleep, think about your papers in your sleep.
• Publishing should be a priority in your professional life. It’s easy to let other job or study responsibilities take up all your time, but if you keep publishing it will put you ahead in your career.

Some useful resources

Dear gang,

Here is a link to the dissertation support group document that I mentioned at the first meeting:

http://www.rackham.umich.edu/downloads/publications/DissSuppGrp.pdf

And here is more information about the books that I mentioned :

1. Strunk and White, The Elements of Style

This is a classic writing guide for English writing that we are often recommended as undergraduates. E.B.  White also wrote the children’s book Charlotte’s Web.

The book contains some specific rules about writing, but its recommendation of style is summed up here:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

—Elementary Principles of Composition, The Elements of Style

You can read more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style

The book is available in the Mahidol Library.

2. Becker, Howard S. Writing for Social Scientists

I found this book extremely helpful when I wrote my dissertation. It contains great tips about motivation and overcoming writer’s block.

(from the author)

http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker

Down-home advice on how to avoid the problems of writing that plague students, professors, and everyone who wants to tell what their research has taught them about society. Plenty of advice, plenty of illuminating stories, all designed to make writing more fun and less of a pain. (Some people tell me that just putting the book under their pillow at night cured all their problems, but I don’t believe them.) This new edition brings the chapter on computers up-to-the-minute and comments on length on new developments in academic life that have made writing problems worse than they used to be

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0226041328 | ISBN-13: 978-0226041322 | Edition: 2

You can read parts of the book and see the table of contents on the Amazon page:

http://tinyurl.com/7ugg8qj

I will get a copy of the book from the library and talk about it more in future meetings.

Posted on April 21, 2012 by krichter99 | Leave a comment | Edit