November 2022 round-up

And just like that, November is over, and we are getting closer and closer to the end of the year.

While I was very good at goal ticking in October, I largely fell off the wagon this month. After some reflection about why that was the case, I think it is because I made October’s goals very specific, even pencilling in steps to achieve those goals in the diary. So, that’s definitely something to be mindful of for December, as I have some catching up to do.

On the research front, I continued to work on the grant idea related to digital literacy in the health field. One of the team members, the talented Joao Vieira da Cunha, secured some seed money to finance the literature review, and is now in the process of recruiting assistants to do the first round of screening. This consists of going through the various papers identified through our database search, using the selected keywords, and classifying them as either relevant to the study or not. One of the problems of doing research about digital / online / internet, is that we pick up a lot of papers where digital / online / internet was the means for collecting data (e.g., online survey), rather than the focus of the research.

We also spent a lot of time budgeting for the various activities, as that is essential to secure additional funding. It was quite interesting to see the different ways of working and the different assumptions that each of us brings to the project. Two of us are from social sciences, and two from the medical field, and we are used to different reward mechanisms, cultures, etc… which requires some adjusting to. For instance, when social scientists interview experts, we will usually offer a small financial incentive (say, a £20 voucher); whereas medical experts are more likely to be motivated by co-authorship than a voucher. One reason may be that pharma companies already offer very generous incentives to medical experts to participate in their studies, whereas that does not happen in social sciences. So, vouchers have limited value for medical experts. Moreover, it is normal to have papers with lots of authors in the medical sciences, whereas the norm is 2-4 in the social sciences because you only include those that have contributed significantly to the design of the research. This kind of adjustment is something that I had experienced, already, in the Taking Liberties project, and which the team reflected on in this paper.

I also attended a research grant workshop, and worked on two other project ideas.

November is AcWriMo, and I used this prompt to work through the manuscript for the second edition of the book “Management Research – Applying the Principles”. Weeks 1 and 2 actually went very well. I, then, trailed off a bit, but I still managed to make some serious progress on two chapters. I also went to Henley for a meeting with my co-authors, Susan Rose and Nigel Thrift, whom I hadn’t seen face to face since we wrapped p the first edition of the book!

In other writing related news, I had a couple of meetings for a paper about the metaverse, and I reviewed four papers.

On the teaching front, I delivered various workshops, and have been supervising 12 undergraduate research projects.

Other than that, I donated blood, had my Covid booster, had some online training, and caught up with friends. Child 1 returned from her travels, and we enjoyed some Mate tea.