After talking to one of my collaborators in July, I decided it was a good idea to send all of my collaborators monthly research updates. I’m also going to make blog posts to keep all who are interested and participated in my research abreast of what I’m doing. In my opinion, writing monthly updates are a good idea to not only keep you on track, but also keep everyone who is taking some interest in your research in the loop.
I am currently working on formatting the data for the VA hospital reviews. Given that the Excel sheets do not follow a consistent format and the number of hospitals that reported this data, it is taking some time to get everything together. I am hoping that I finished with this process by mid-September at the latest.
I am also in the process of collecting surveys. I would like to have at least 50 responses before I start with scheduling interviews, but I will start scheduling interviews starting from mid-September regardless. I e-mailed the director of the Student Veterans Resource Center at my university and he will put the link for the survey in the student veteran’s newsletter. I also sent the link and flyer for the survey to a colleague who will e-mail the director of the Student Veterans Resource Center at his institution.
I am also receiving some help from a PhD candidate at my university who is a woman veteran. Her insights have been valuable, and I plan to contact a list of contacts she provided to see if they are interested in my project and would be interested in disseminating my survey.
I have just started to do interviews and I plan to schedule and conduct interviews all throughout October. Also, I am in the final stages in getting the data prepared for analysis. I plan to see if there is a correlation between internet review data and the government produced data on VA hospitals. In addition, I want to see how patient satisfaction varies geographically on various scales. For my dissertation, I am required to submit three papers, and I am planning to finish a draft of my first paper by the end of this month.
Anyway, that’s all from here. I will post another update at the end of this month or the beginning of November!