Research Reflection

Over the course of this semester, I want to learn more about children who are transgender.  Not too long ago, the Anderson show had children on there who believed they were in the wrong body, and were suppose to be the opposite sex then what they were born.  When I was talking to my roommate about this, she had no idea children went through that kind of struggle, so I'm assuming a lot of people don't know either.

I assume people of this population do not fully understand the decisions they are making.  Some of the children are going through hormone intake and sex change surgeries, and they haven't even hit puberty yet.  When I was younger, I was a tom boy, played in dirt and rough housed with the boys, so I'm sure when I was younger I wanted to be a boy, but now, I'm glad I'm a girl!

I first heard about this from the Anderson show, I also work with someone who is my age and is transgender, and he just had surgery to remove his breast, so I've been able to learn about this topic a little already.

My biggest difficulty will be finding enough research on it, because I assume there aren't too many cases out there yet of children who are transgender.

Search String

For this exercise, I used a subject specific database called Medicine.  Looking into the website more, it seems to be the Medline List of Records.  For this semester long research project, I've narrowed my topic down to the question of; What medical advances have been made for people with Down Syndrome since it was first diagnosed?

The search string I have come up with (Medicine OR Cure) And (Down Syndrome OR Down’s Syndrome) And (Diagnose OR First Appeared).  By using that subject specific database, I had 12 results come back.

To narrow down my search results in the Academic Results Premier, I'm going to narrow down different time periods I want certain results, and I'm also going to narrow down the different types of media the results come back in.

In the Academic Search Premier, I had 23 results come back, I don't feel like that is too many results come back, its giving me enough options to look through and find what I need. Within that 23 results, 6 of them are in full text.

My research question has changed since I first started doing research, simply because when I first started this, the only thing I was searching for was Down Syndrome.

Coming up with a research question was difficult because I didn't know where to start.  There are so many things I don't know about my population, and I want to get everything I can about learning about them, so I was nervous to narrow down my search, but now I know if I hadn't, I wouldn't get anything out of this because there is too much information out there.

Getting ready to use Academic Search Premier

After looking on the search premier a little bit, it's evident that it is full of information, and has a wide collection of different types of information, whether that's through poems, articles, or bibliographies. I'm not sure if I have used this specific search before, it looks really familiar, so I must have browsed on it once before.  It would have been for my english 191 class.  I have also used different search engines, under the library section there is a section that says other databases A-Z and it has a lot of search engines, and I have used a large variety of those, again for my english class. The fear I have about using the Academic Search Premier is getting a lot of results.  But, I have been able to narrow the search already for 981, down to 75, so I know if I keep getting more specific, I will be able to narrow the search down even more.

Population

I've done a little reading on my population, which is Down Syndrome, and I actually became sick to my stomach at one point.  By the 20th century, apparently people with Down Syndrome were being forced to be sterilized so they could not have children with Down Syndrome because back then, people did not know how someone could have Down Syndrome.

I'm still very interested in the different medical advances that have been made for people with Down Syndrome, so far I have found out that when it was first diagnosed, many people who had Down Syndrome died during infancy due to lack of care.  

Encyclopedia vs Wikipedia

After learning some more about encyclopedia's and wikipedia, there are clearly pro's and con's to both.  First with encyclopedia's, a pro is there is information dated back to many many years ago, so everything humanly possibly to think about is covered somewhere in some encyclopedia.  A con is they are very long, and because of new research always being done, they tend to get outdated very quickly.  Wikipedia's pro is they are constantly being updated and can be accessed anywhere with internet access.  A con is that anyone can write on wikipedia, and easily give false information.

I can't seem to figure out how to search for just encyclopedia's in our library catalog, but I did find some e-book ones online, I went to e-books and clicked on the first one, credo references, and I actually found 1329 results about down syndrome.

After doing a little reading on the e-books I found and reading wikipedia, I actually found both useful.  Since I don't know very much about down syndrome, I'm not very sure where to start, so using Wikipedia gives me an idea where to start, because they provide very basic information on down syndrome, like when the first case was diagnosed, this will help me to narrow my searches.

Picking a Book

For the semester long research project I have to do, I am going to research people with Down Syndrome, and in specific, the medical advances that have occurred since it was first diagnosed.  I'll be doing specific research on the advances, but also general research on the topic since I don't know very much about people with Down Syndrome. When I first started the research on the SCSU library page, I went to advance search, and searched for Down Syndrome and Medical Advances, and sadly, no results came back.  I then searched simply for Down Syndrome and 91 results came back, and it seemed to be a lot of books for parents.  Then I searched Down Syndrome and diagnosis and only returned one result that is a government document.  When I searched the public library website and typed in Down Syndrome and Medicine in the advance search, 2 results came back, one for bowl movements and the other was children stories who have Down Syndrome.  I feel like I'm lucking out! When I went back to the SCSU library search, I found the section that has ebooks and found a couple there.  I personally don't like ebooks, I don't find them enjoying to read, I like being able to hold a book and to make markings, whether its highlighting or if I can't do that, post it marks.  I read a paragraph of one of the ebooks and stopped because I disliked it so much!  I have a smart phone, and can access the internet, so I would assume I can pull up ebooks on my phone, but I know I would never use that feature.  As I said earlier I tried the public library search.  When I just searched for Down Syndrome, I came across a lot of fictional books which I wouldn't use for research, so I personally didn't find the public library to be as useful.

What do you assume to be true about ______?

I was asked to think about a vulnerable population that I don't know very much about, or that I have a slight fear of.  When I was first asked to think about a group,  my mind drew a blank.  I'm not saying I know everything about all the populations in the world, but there wasn't a particular group that came to my mind that really scared me.  Throughout the week, I thought a lot about this subject, thought about if a certain person walked into the store I managed, which kind of persn would I most be hestitant about.  I still don't have a very clear idea, but a group that has come to mind, (and I do apologize if I offend anyone, I want to be more educated about this topic) is people with Down Sydrome. 

I would like to consider myself an intellegent person, and I undersatnd my fear of people with Down Sydrome is irrational and unneccesary, but it's one of those things I can't help.  I think my fear stems off of not knowing what they are capable of.  I know each person with Down Sydrome has different severities of the sydrome, so not knowing how large their brain capacity is, or not knowing what kind of things make them angry, because I have heard they are an unstable population, whether you are their best friend or not, they may snap.  But I suppose any person could.  I have also heard that people with Down Sydrome are very smart, but possibly only smart when it comes to certain topics, like some may know everything there is to know about air planes, while others may know everything about boats.  That part slightly scares me, because it makes me wonder how they decide that's the most interesting thing, and that's what they decide to focus on so much instead of other things. 

I think the biggest struggle I will have on doing research about this is going out of my comfort zone and learning about a population that has frightened me for many years.  I know it will be refreshing once I learn more about them.  Another struggle is the guilt.  Voicing that I am afraid of a particular group makes me feel guilty, mankind has come a long way in making people equal and making everyone understand each other, and I take pride in myself for trying to give everyone an equal oppurtunity in my mind when I first meet them, to try and not past too much judgement, but deep down, I haven't given everyone that equal oppurtunity and I feel guilty for doing so.  I hope by doing this research, I can educate myself better.