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

Notes on our first meeting

Posted on April 19, 2012 by ipsrwritingclub

We held the first meeting of our writing club on April 18. This is just a brief note to summarize the results of the meeting and to inform those who couldn’t come about the decisions we made:

–Nine people attended (lucky number!), six PhD students and three ajarns.

–We discussed our personal goals for the group. The consensus is that we want to improve our writing in English, to get support for making progress on our dissertations and research articles, and to share knowledge about aspects of writing and publishing.

–We discussed the ground rules for the group and decided the following:

–We’ll continue to meet every two weeks on Wednesday, 13:30-14:30 in room 324

–We will set up the technology for people to join by skype if they cannot attend in       person

–We will leave the composition of the group as it is for now (PhD students, ajarns and researchers), but once we become stable we may break into sub-groups or form new groups (such as for MA students).

–The format will change from meeting to meeting–sometimes one of us will speak on a topic, sometimes we will have guest speakers, sometimes we will do concrete work on writing–but we will always give each person a chance to speak on their progress.

–We will each commit to progress on a certain topic by the next meeting, but the commitment is flexible and some may skip a commitment if they are busy.

–Some members are committing to making structured progress on producing a paper for publication. These members are working on their title and conceptual framework for next time.

–Ramesh shared some tips for getting published. Wow! More on this in a later post.

–We each made a commitment for the next meeting. I’ll also share these  in a later post.

–Aj. Nick will speak next time on developing argumentation in a journal article or paper.

Our next meeting is on May 2. I will not be sending any reminders, but please do join us if you are free.