Data Entry

Today the team met at the Tongan Community Service Center to meet Diana to get trained on survey data entry. Once we got there we were greeted by Vanessa, Diana, and Sina. Once everyone got acquainted, we went to the meeting room to discuss data entry. We learned how to enter data into excel, we also looked at actual surveys that people took about breast cancer. There were 2 types of surveys that the subjects took, pre-test and a post-test. The pre-test was based on the subject's knowledge of breast cancer and the post-test to my understanding was taken after they've learned about breast cancer. So today, we learned that researcher do data entry and they have what they call sort of like a code book; for example, A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. So if the subject answered A for a question, you would enter 1 on the excel. We didn't have time to do Data Analysis and we all agreed that we would meet up next time because everyone wanted to learn more about analyzing survey data for future projects.

Sept. 28, 2009

When M0na and I met with Chas and Joe Fa'Avae at GCN, we discussed the Conceptual model; moreover, we conversed our experience at PIFA. We also received 2 more health related articles from Diana that could help us come up with ideas on how to go about our research project. We also discussed our final hypothesis and went in depth on how our ending results would look like by the end of our internship, although it would seem like this is the end for our project, it's actually just the beginning and we're excited to get it going and hopefully will launch it. Tomorrow I believe that we will be meeting with Diana to discuss our next step in this project that we are part-taking in.

PIFA

Today Mona and I went to San Diego with Leilani; a new lady we met through Jay, for the Pacific Island Festival, we worked at the GCN and FDN booth. We passed out the different programs and information about different health related issues which had a couple of different languages on them; marshallese, chammorro, and english. Some of the health info that we were giving out and talking a little about were mammograms, cardiovascular, diets, and diabetes.



We also met other marshallese there that we've never met before, we learned about their life and how they came about to the states. I was curious to why they chose to move here to the states instead of wanting the simple life back at the Marshall Islands. It was nice to hear them speak pure fluent marshallese, it just brings back memories of the the islands and the simple lifestyle I once lived. And although I miss home a lot, I've grown accustomed to the lifestyle here in the U.S. but still I wouldn't mind taking a short vacation back home. The food at the festival was great, there were lots of pretty island merchandises, and the performances were awesome that I'll for sure come back next year. This was actually our first time attending PIFA and I thought that today was a good 1st time experience.

Conceptual Model

Yesterday Chas emailed me the Conceptual map and we conversed about it, after that I read one of the articles that Diana sent us called Guidelines for Constructing a Survey by Cindy Passmore, MA; Alison E. Dobbie, MD; Michael Parchman, MD; and James Tysinger, PhD. I thought maybe reading this would greatly help our team develop a productive survey. So basically this article was about how to create a constructive survey, and the I learned that a survey should be easy to answer, can result in consistent data, and it can answer the main research question. The point of Surveys is to collect and gather information to find an answer to questions a researcher has. It is very important to develop a good survey otherwise we would have unsatisfactory or incomplete results. There are limitations to surveys because some are based on the subject's honesty and memory or it could be that they have little understanding of the question which is why we have to be clear about the questions we come up with. There are 3 different types of surveys mentioned in this article: Descriptive Surveys which to my understandings, deals with facts and opinions; Explanatory Survey which tries to find the cause and effect of certain situations; and lastly, Unidimensional and Multidimensional Scales which deals with multiple constructs.There are different ways to go about the survey, one is to do one on one interview or a telephone survey which is much expensive and time consuming although you collect more data this way. Another way is to give out surveys for subjects to fill out through mail. This way is less expensive yet results in less data because of incomplete surveys or no one takes the surveys.

Steps in developing a survey:

1. State the problem
2. Plan the project
3. State the research question
4. Review the literature
5. Develop/adapt survey items
6. Construct the survey
7. Pilot test the draft survey
8. Administer the survey

These steps were very helpful to us, we've already stated our problem which was that the separation of churches affect the youth negatively, we've planned out our project by doing our project goal outline, we've reviewed some literature on how to come up with surveys. We haven't pass the other steps because we are just working on the foundation of this project.

REACH conference

Today we met up at the Long Beach Hyatt hotel where I got to see US grantees and other health partnerships coming together to discuss health disparities in the nation and what they can do to help or prevent them. This was such a great experience for me, especially when I'm going to medical field. It's so touching to see different organizations from different places working together to bring forth the health disparities among African American, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Latino populations.

The conference started off with an opening ceremony from the Kutturan Chamoru Performers, the group did really well. Their dance was unique, I loved how the girls were singing while they danced, they had soft lovely voices. Jay played the guitar and the multi-talented Joey also played the guitar and was the leadsinger of the group along with another lady with a beautiful voice.

Our first speaker was Wayne H. Giles who's currently the Director of the Division of Adult and Community Health and Centers for Disease Control and Preventions. After his presentation, we had a little stretch break/lift off where everyone gets up and participates in this little exercise activity to get our blood flowing throughout our body. Our next guest speaker was Camera Phyllis Jones and she is a family physician focuses on how racism impacts the nation's health. Her presentation was great and I love how she has stories to make us better understand things like for example her garden story. The way she explained the garden of roses being like a population of people and the soil is like the the resources that people have, just hearing her stories and example made me understand the problem and how better resource equals healthier life.

After Dr. Jones speech there were different sessions that we can choose from and I decided to go to the Unnatural Causes Viewing. We watched a video called Unnatural Causes-Place Matters and I learned that a place determines what social matters your involved with. Here are some notes that I took down while watching the movie:

• Health disparities in Richmond and Washinton
• Eating lots of fastfood can lead to removal of gallbladder
• Living in disadvantage community increases the risk of heart disease
• Anything that has to do with improving quality of life is a Health Policy
• WHERE you live impacts your health

This video really opened up my eyes and I got to thinking that it is true, wherever you live does in fact affect your health. My grandparents came back to the states from the islands a couple of months ago because my grandpa needed a new pacemaker, but when they arrived they looked very healthy and walking around without any help. Right now my grandma can't walk and my grandpa doesn't look so well either, they'll be leaving in December back to the islands after my grandpa's last check up. So after watching this video, it got me thinking about my grandparents and understand that maybe they're getting sicker everyday because they probably miss home and the food here aren't so healthy for them. And maybe the healthy food back home aren't as expensive as they are here they eat less healthy food.

Sept. 21, 2009

Today we met up at GCN and we had a conference call with Diana. We went over our 10 hypotheses that we worked on and got some feedback from her. We agreed that our hypotheses were repetitive and that maybe we can combine bits and pieces from each of the ones we came up with. Here's what we narrowed it down to:

1. The urban village of the Marshallese Community in Orange County resides within the church, due to various disagreements among the church's principles on religion; it has had an adverse affect on the Marshallese youth and young adults to turn to drug and alcohol abuse.

2. Moreover, drugs, alcohol, and different substances are taking control of the youth in the Marshallese community. Lack of cooperation on all sides of the disagreements on their religion contributes more frustration and tension amongst the Marshallese.

After narrowing it down, now we are going to work on trying to combine these two hypotheses so that we have one main hypothesis. We have a lot to learn about research and we thank Diana for the great tips and articles she had provided for us to read and learn from.

2nd day of Pacific Islander Festival

Today we went around the park passing out Health Surveys for pacific islanders to take. This was a good experience and practice for me because when we start the survey part in our 1akwe Project, we know what to say and how to go about asking people to take surveys. It's important that you know what you are passing out because not everyone know the importance of health surveys. We probably collected over 50+ surveys and majority of them were taken by the marshallese community which was a good thing because we've started to build trust and a relationship with them. Trust is most important because its the only way to get people to speak out and make our data collecting and health project easy and go smoothly. After the surveys, we sat down at the booth and passed out health information and talked about the importance of maintaining a good health to people who stopped by.