The aim of this seminar was to start to develop research ideas for sociologically informed research projects (in line with the module focus). A wide range of interesting topics were suggested. To sum up the research topics, I would say that they covered maternity care (including breastfeeding), migrant health, mental health, contested disorders, experiences of pain, lifestyle issues, complementary therapy and infectious disease. There are many overlaps between the research topics e.g. many of them could be said to have a mental health aspect.
You have started to identify lots of areas related to the research topic to explore through questions or a topic guide. Many of the questions will elicit useful descriptive information about the views and behaviours of the people to be interviewed. It is also really helpful in terms of improving health outcomes to gain an understanding of health issues in context by exploring how people experience health and illness in terms o the social and cultural contexts in which they participate. This will enable you to find out things you hadn’t considered at the start. One way of doing this is ask some open questions to explore aspects of the issue in more depth. What I mean by this should hopefully be clearer after the next lecture which is looking at illness experience using qualitative research.
