Dear Peter,Hoping you are doing fine at Manila. i have yielded to a pressure from my supervisor and handed-in my polio research proposal. i have nonetheless updated it to a level just before you left for manila. i sincerely appreciate your kind help.i posted a new topic i am currently working on, i am not sure if the link i used is the right one as i am still trying to find my bearings on the network. the memory of your kind suggestions will forever remain fresh. best wishes.

Dear Peter,Thank You so much Dr Peter for this wonderful help to me. I accept ALL the suggestions you made and i will start incooprating the suggestions as soon as possible.I wish to draw you attention and further ask your opinion to some issues raised by the audience during the presentation,1. it was suggested that even the first phase i should go directly into the community to recruit the participants rather than to limit my self to hospital.2. that i should consider expanding the scope from polio to include other vaccine preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough and diptheria pertussis. according to the observer, coverage for all these remain low, partly due to similar problem, so why single out polio.3. that the quantitative survey should aim at identifying those who immunise their children and those who did not and then conduct the qualitative inquiry exclusively among those who did not immunised their children4. as you rightly observed i am ask to see to the inclussion of the vaccine providers which you wonderfully listed for me in your last mail.so i will be glad if you can review these opinions.concerning sponsorship, i thank you for the links, i will explore as soon as possible. but i wish to inform you that at the moment as a staff of my state ministry of health i have a monthly salary of 1000USD, and with my modest life i feel i can take care of my study if it comes to that. i am not pessimistic but i have hardly gets it easy so i am ready to forge ahead dispite all odds.i really cannot have enough words to thank you for the effortsyusuf misau..

Dear Peter,You ve definitely make general points to me Peter, or to sum it up, You have rescued me from a captivity of the prison of thoughts. i am extermely grateful for your generous lecture on this page. though i am excited right now with the level of in-put you have made, i will like to say i am quite comfortable with the first topic you suggested: Polio eradication in nigeria, investigating possibilities of happier future. i am also happy with the theory which i felt is exactly what i want but coud'nt express that way. i shall put all these together in few days and if you dont mind i shall upload the file for more critism. By the way Peter I am not sure if i introduce my self formally, I am a 33 year old Male Medical Doctor, I trained in Nigeria and work just briefly before i developed a desire for research. i move to malaysia to study MPH, and now want to cap it up with a PhD in epidemiology, thanks to this website i discover you and your suppport is quite indespensable.Yusuf Misau.

Dear Misau,I'll try to say less!1. Regarding your (tentative?) title:Polio eradication in Nigeria: turning problem to opportunity.This sounds as if you have found the answer before studying the problem, or before you succeeded in creating opportunities.Here are two alternatives that might be suitable as working titles:"Polio in Nigeria: investigating the possibility of a happier future"Or:"Polio in Nigeria: community responses, oral history, and educational opportunities"By the way, in your country, is it possible to change the title of a thesis after it has been first accepted? The actual title of your final thesis should not be fixed until you have at least made substantial progress with the analysis and interpretation during the final writing up. At this stage you really only need a good working title that helps you explain the work you are doing to others, and that you are happy to work with.2. It is curious that (a) suspicion, alarm, and fear can spread in a community to prevent community acceptance of a procedure that is elsewhere well accepted and known to be safe, and that (b) educational information, presented in a neutral factual way, does not spread virally.i.e. Education is hard work, but alarming disinformation or misinformation or anti-information is easy. Is it true, generally, that alarming negative messages travel faster than encouraging positive messages?3. Your thesis might begin first by tracking or reviewing the history of the spread of negative views about vaccination in general and with regard to polio. What actual cases of ineffective or dangerous vaccination have been recorded in Nigeria? Such cases are possible when vaccines are weakened or destroyed by poor preparation, storage, or followup, or are contaminated with live bacteria. What actual procedures were in place to avoid such problems?4. After explaining the context as realistically as possible, try asking when, where and how were negative views first expressed, and how did they spread?This is where qualitative interviews would be needed with various players in the story - the clerics, the media, the doctors, the aid agencies, and so on. You wont be able to reach all people, but you can try to reach at least some.5. Then you might then consider presenting positive views (and what you others consider to be true views) about vaccines in different ways to a cross-section of people to gauge their responses.Is it possible to find former naysayers who respond by saying "Well, if it had been explained like that, we would never have done or said what we did!"?This might be a response you would like to hear, but you have to be careful, in your methods, not to lead people into giving you responses you want to hear (one of the number one problems with qualitative and quantitative surveys of all kinds).At each step in a project like this, you need to test your questions, rephrase them, take advice from early respondents and revise the approach and so on. Otherwise you risk making a huge but flawed effort with a one-shot survey. Surveys like this can be huge and expensive, or simple and cheap.What matters is being aware as possible of what you are doing at each step, while giving yourself chances to learn from mistakes. You need to develop approaches that work in your context, not approaches that can only work in very orderly and well-educated societies. If you do not make at least some mistakes, you will probably not learn much.6. So your theory might be something like this:"Although formal or long-term education programmes are needed for health education, faster or more popular means for communicating positive health information are also needed, and are possible in Nigeria"A classic case was the work of Mr Condom, the popular nickname of an actual man working in Thailand, and raising awareness of a simple prevention method for the transmission of AIDS. He used popular media to good effect in a country that is relatively open-minded about human desires.To conclude:I already said too much, but...If your goal is research that has immediate practical and positive outcomes, you need a theory about how such outcomes can be achieved.The particular examples and theory I suggested above can be ignored, used, or modifed -- as you wish. I hope that I am at least making some general points that are useful for you.Peter


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Peter J. Matthews, Chief Admin.,
The Research Cooperative,
Auckland & Kyoto.

Contact: researchcooperative [at] gmail [dot] com

Dear Peter,i return to ask you some more specific question, what do you think about action research in this my situation? do you think it is feasible? what are the merits and demerits of action research in this case? thanks and sorry for all the troubles.

Dear Peter,i am a bit more courageous to hear that you are behind me at least in liking the topic so to say. i see reasons in all that you say, but in the end you have merely kept me in my viciuos cycle. do you mean i change the title all together or just alter it to satisfy the doubting Thomas, what of this: Polio eradication in nigeria. "peeling the onion"? or this Polio eradication in nigeria: perspectives of the muslim clerics.concerning the suggestion you raised about mixing quali and quanti i will be glad if you can elaborate more on that please. i heard alot about the mix method appraoch but then i also heard its rather hectic.

Dear Misau,There is no reason to avoid quantitative approaches, but they need to be designed on the basis of some initial qualitative understanding of the situation you are looking at. And then you can aim for a kind of iteration between quantitative and qualitative approaches: ideally you will see a synergy emerge between them and your own understanding.One direction to consider is how people perceive risk: initially, the small risk from a visible vaccination program looms larger in people's minds than a polio epidemic that may be more-or-less invisible, and that may be disguised to some extent by a general condition of poverty, or by abandonment and isolation of the victims.There are doubtless many well-funded studies of medical risk perceptions in wealthy nations - I wonder how applicable they are to circumstances in Nigeria.You need to be careful with your title: do you mean opportunity for the communities and country, or opportunity for yourself as a (possibly selfish) researcher? I am sure you mean the former (though I wonder how), but the title is a little ambiguous, which is not a good thing in this case.This may be a rather public place to say so, but I once had a girlfriend who had experienced polio in one leg - she was beautiful and incredibly tough, managed without any physical supports, and had built a career for herself as a teacher. So I have some personal interest in your project, in a distant kind of way. She also had good treatment when young, as the daughter of a doctor (in Japan).When polio first reached Japan though, the country was still poor. There might be parallels here for you to look at.Peter


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Peter J. Matthews, Chief Admin.,
The Research Cooperative,
Auckland & Kyoto.

Contact: researchcooperative [at] gmail [dot] com

Hi peter, thanks for such a wonderful contribution, actually i am more or less a novice in qualitative research but my zeal keeps increasing by the day, i will try to decode all the suggestions you offered, and put them into action. i suppose you are aware that nigeria leads in the current burden of polio globally, and more specipically the muslim dominated northern nigeria. over the past 5 years controversies lead to suspicions on the viability of polio vaccine, the consequence is what we are seeing today. though much has been done but not enough to reverse the current trend of polio pandermic. so my aims include search for a solution thruogh qualitative approach which i think will allow me to go in-depth to do this. and knowing the type of society i feel the clerics have a certain role to play, so that makes me think towads what you mention above: role of religion in responses to new problems and opportunities, but then i am a propective PhD candidate in the field of public health so my problem with this title is its too much of social science and i am not sure if i can fully convince my quantitative minded proposed supervisor, so at the moment i am working on the title: polio eradication in nigeria: turning problem to opportunity.so if i may go back to your first question, my goals are fasion a solution to the polio set backs and at the same time meet my personal acadermic needs for a good and innovative dessertation.concerning the questions you raised about the clerics current soucre of health information, what they know about global polio issues and contacts with local health workers, i suppose this are quite important quetions and are among the question i feel i should really know more about, so what are you suggesting? you fill i should think of a pilot study to assess this questions you raised or i should mould them into my main study? thanks and hoping you spare time once again to respond.

Dear Misau,I suppose the clerics in Nigeria may be familiar with local issues related to polio, and less familiar with global issues.You need to map out the relevant parameters for your study, and the state of existing knowledge, before looking for a theoretical approach that suits your research goals. And what are your research goals? I suppose the clerics have a central role in local community discussions about health and education (for example), so you might be looking for ways to effectively help them help their communities. How will you eventually communicate the results of your research? This may also influence how you want to start doing the research.So:Where do the clerics get health-related information from currently? What opportunities do they have to learn about local and global conditions and responses? What relationships do they have with local polio victims, local health workers, and government experts? Who do they meet and who do they really listen to, and who can actually give them reliable information in their own language?If you want to do qualitative research, then you will need to think about how to approach clerics and conduct interviews and discussions. Under what circumstances is such work possible? What permissions are needed? What explanations do you need to give them? How can you develop a practical consultative approach that is rewarding for all parties involved? To what extent do you need to solicit private versus public opinions and information, and are you able to offer assurances of maintaining privacy when making use of private opinions and information? In anthropology there are various ways of dealing with this, in publications.As for theory - this depends on what you want to theorise about: The epidemology of polio? The transmission of modern medical knowledge from the world to local communities (and vice versa)? Linguistic issues around knowledge transfer? The role of social hierarchy in aiding or blocking the transmission of knowledge? The integration of traditional and modern forms of knowledge? The role of religion in responses to new problems and opportunities? Are you approaching the work from a social or biological perspective, or both?These are just some initial thoughts. I hope other members of the Cooperative can offer more ideas. Good luck!P.


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Peter J. Matthews, Chief Admin.,
The Research Cooperative,
Auckland & Kyoto.

Contact: researchcooperative [at] gmail [dot] com

Thanks for the reply. I have developed my proposal and completed my research. It is fine that you have started to write. Go for several literature review and start to note the ideas. And for the process you may search on Google. If you want I may help you by providing materials.Thank youSaleh