summertiiime and the living’s [independent research]
this post is officially written by a second-year!! that’s right! i finished the first year of my phd!!! i have absolutely loved it so far and have enjoyed it beyond measure. things are actually (strangely) lining up REALLY well… i earned straight “a”s this semester. i look back on this year and realize i’ve learned SO MUCH in such a short time. i do not remember the last time i truly felt i’d learned such a great deal. probably my first year in french class in eighth grade. i really enjoyed all of my professors. data analysis II was my favorite class (seriously, who ever thought i of all people would become a quantoid?). research methods II was also a good class. the exams and projects for that class are SO LABOR-INTENSIVE and also really good for building a solid foundation of knowledge about research. practicum was very challenging (quite honestly, most of the time) and i think we have built a solid base to go off of. our class just submitted the irb this week and is completing the pilot testing before we go live. exciting things!
speaking of exciting things… i was selected into the agesw pre-dissertation fellows program!!! who ever would have thought?! i began my application in december while at sara’s over break, so i am elated that my hard work appears to have paid off. i rewrote—i’m not kidding—probably 8 drafts of my personal statement for cassey and sara. once they signed off, i sent my cv and personal statement through charlotte. once she signed off, i sent the same materials through nancy kusmaul, who was in the first cohort of fellows and now teaches at umbc. once she signed off, i sent it through joan davitt, who was really great at helping me tighten it and pull it all together. apparently it worked? this is such a great step because, in the last third of the semester, i was lucky enough to have a skype call with dr. tracy schroepfer, who teaches at wisconsin and who is one of the co-directors. she is one of the pioneers of the body of research on the wthd. i first read her research in sara’s death and dying class in spring 2009 and marveled at how truly amazing it was. when i got into my msw, i continued to love the content, though i couldn’t shake how hard it would be in the logistic sense to carve out a space for myself in that area (e.g., irb concerns, people wanting to participate, people’s ability to engage, people’s priorities at their eol, etc.)… so, when i framed my research interests in my application materials, i’d simply framed them around a close secondary interest. once i got into the program and dove into the literature, i kept coming back to this content and sort of allowed myself to keep wading deeper and deeper under the premise of, “i’m going to keep going until i see a reason to stop.” so far, it’s paid off! so, forward. onward and upward! as a benefit of my selection, i will attend gsa (this year, in austin, tx).
similarly, the research i’m doing with caroline is expected to wrap up somewhat soon! we were selected to present at cswe in denver! we were also selected to present at inccip in huddersfield, england! i am hoping we will be selected to present at sswr in dc! i just need to figure out funding… i’ve applied for the travel fellowship through the phd program for cswe. caroline will use $500 of her faculty funding for my travel to england. she has requested the dean match that amount and that is still tbd. the only other thing currently on the docket is the secondary data analysis project i did for data analysis II with cagle… working with the HRS was a VERY laborious endeavor but it gave me really good data!! i seriously thank joon for helping me run the data and statement files in a way to bring about a workable data set and then helping me merge the six data sets i had into one final product. seriously—we met approximately seven times and every time i was throwing coffee at him, as a thank-you/i’m sorry you have to do this.
this project examined the predictive properties of healthcare encounters at different levels of care (i.e., hospitalization, er admission, nursing facility, and outpatient visit) on death anxiety. the death anxiety variable was ordinal, so my options were (a) keep it ordinal and run a multinomial logistic regression, (b) use it as continuous and run a multiple linear regression, or (c) dummy code it and run a multiple logistic regression. (have i mentioned before how much i love regression?) i had originally wanted to run an anova but then cagle pointed out the possible link between hospitalization and er admission would violate the assumption of independence of observations, so he encouraged a regression model. i ran the linear and found it legit violated 3/4 assumptions, so i ran the logistic and got some serious SS results! WAHOO! (i’d be lying if i said i didn’t tear up at my first “big kid” project working “successfully”—yes, i’m totally acknowledging the publication bias.) so, i’m now just waiting on cagle’s comments on the manuscript we handed in as our capstone project before i can begin revisions. i met with him before i presented my paper to the class and asked if he would be willing to mentor me through the publication process, as i had never published before. he was kind enough to agree, so once i make his edits, he and i will connect to discuss next steps. bruce also agreed to review. since his edits are always so solid, i think i will stand a good chance at getting my first publication! the plan is to target death studies, so we shall see! i am also planning on submitting that as a late-breaker session for gsa. this would bring me to four conferences in the very near future. i am hoping this gets selected for gsa partly because my travel is and registration is already covered through the fellowship.
speaking of cagle, he will be my gra this upcoming year and i could not be more excited! i am sad to leave caroline, though i also know i will learn and grow A LOT with john. here’s hoping for a productive year!! in her letter congratulating me on my fellowship (for which she wrote my letter of recommendation), joan apologized for not getting matched with me as a gra for the upcoming year. she explained she had no funding, so here’s hoping our timetables will align in the near future! in the meantime, she is in sweden presenting with rajean and has assured me they plan to complete their coding of our conference project upon their return. this will yield my second publication! i also need to check in with her about whether she has any other projects going on that i can help out with. when i met with her and brought it up, she told me she would check and see if she has any additional funding. i never inquire about funding because it truly is such a privilege to publish with her and it is honestly so wonderful that she always makes it a point to look into. she has no need to do that for me, but she does, and it is so admirable.
sara’s also agreed to let me jump on one of her projects, so that would give me another publication. i’m also currently working on a scoping review with the gerontology group on social isolation in informal caregivers of older adults with dementia. it’s actually going pretty well! we just wrapped the title/abstract screen. there are four of us on the project. the initial search across three databases yielded 301 articles. once duplicates were discarded, there were 182. so, we divided this into halves. ji and i took one half, while joon and sol took the other. those halves were then halved again. i screened one of these quarters as p1 and ji screened the other as p1. then we switched and reviewed each other’s as p2. joon and sol did the same. we will meet this wednesday to resolve discrepant opinions on whether articles should pass this stage of the screen or not.from there, we will begin the full article screen.
all in all, things are going pretty well! i just finished spending a considerable amount of money i do not have on clothes to present. the irony of spending money i do not have on clothes to go to conferences the ssw or gsa or faculty will pay for me to travel to in order to present research is not lost on me. thankfully, cassey is financially keeping my head above water because, if not for her, i’d surely be drowning… speaking of drowning, cassey and i will go to ocnj this weekend and then, in a few months, puerto rico! we had actually originally scheduled our trip to pr during (incidentally) the same exact weekend of the inccip conference in england. fate, huh? all things considered, i am hopeful for a productive and successful summer!
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