Research Journal #1

What was the process by which you narrowed down potential topics to two appropriate ones? And how were these decisions made on the basis of either class discussion, or our required, course textbook (Aveyard 2014), or both? I searched a lot of articles that were of interest to me in the American Journal of Public Health. The topics were about anxiety, mental health, universal healthcare, and policy reform. We discussed in class (also in book) how we needed to be truly invested in our topics because we are spending the entire semester on them and I narrowed them down to one main topic: universal healthcare. The book discussed how the articles needed to be peer reviewed, current, and have information relevant to many other studies.
What research question did you choose, and how are I can be sure you're making a reasoned, academic judgement on the basis of chapters 1-3 (Aveyard 2014)? My research question is: With a new leader in power, how will the structure of American Healthcare change? Is it possible or even plausible for the US to shift to Universal Healthcare as most countries have? This is very current with the new government and the question of what will happen to healthcare. Policies are always changing and I wanted to understand what exactly universal healthcare entails and if it is even plausible for the US to change to it. There is copious amounts of data from other countries and many different articles about my topic. The main articles cited other appropriate articles that were published in other peer reviewed journals and the article itself was cited over one hundred times. My "dream article" has tons of information about what UHC is, how we can change to it, how its worked in other countries, what has failed, etc. What article (or articles) are you basing this question on, and what type of article is it (research, theory, policy, practice) (citation[s] in APA, please)? Tooker J. Affordable Health Insurance for All Is Possible by Means of a Pragmatic Approach. American Journal of Public Health. 2003;93(1):106-109. Trygve Ottersen and Harald Schmidt. Universal Health Coverage and Public Health: Ensuring Parity and Complementarity. American Journal of Public Health: February 2017, Vol. 107, No. 2, pp. 248-250. Article Type: policy How can I be sure that the key vocabulary of the question corresponds not only to literature in the field, but also to chapter 1-3 (Aveyard 2014)? I searched through many articles relating to my topic in the AJPH and used their keywords listed to search for more articles. Based on what your question is, what kind of literature are you going to need? Again, please explicitly reference the text (Aveyard 2014). What is your hierarchy of evidence? In the order of importance going downward (cf. pg. 69 Aveyard): Policy Practice
How exactly did your research question arise out of "practice"? From searching through a lot of articles I was able to determine what exactly I wanted to find out. I used a variety of articles and information to form my question. How do you define your key terms, and how do these definitions link to key journals in the field? Affordable Care Act ACA America Public Health Association APHA Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Universal Healthcare Public Health Initiatives Healthcare Reform Policy Did anything unexpected happen? From you initial search, does it appear as though your research question will work? Or does the vocabulary and/or type of research sought need to be changed? I noticed how I approached my question with initial bias so I had to take a step back and reword my original question and what I actually wanted to find out. My new, revised question will work.
Any final thoughts? About four hours of initial research.