52 weeks in public health research, part 18

Posted by Catt Turney and Jean Adams

From Catt Turney: One of the things I like about the DECIPHer's Cardiff office is that pretty much everyone, staff and students alike, is based in the same building. This means the dark alleys of email can often be avoided in favour of face-to-face talking, and the PhD students feel just as much a part of the centre as the staff. This tomato plant is one of eight brought in by a PhD student at DECIPHer, all of which (plants, not PhD students) were quickly adopted and are now accessorising various windowsills. I'm now facing the dilemma: take it home and protect it from the sub-zero conditions of the office over the weekend, or leave it open to the elements and allow it compete with the others in the Great DECIPHer Tomato Plant Competition 2014?

From Jean Adams: after convincing myself there was absolutely no way to explain the concept of an escalating financial incentive to research participants, I came across this perfectly simple example of how it could be done at the supermarket. Thanks for the advice, Waitrose.

From Jean Adams: I rarely meet real-life research participants. When I was early enough in my career that that would have been my bread-and-butter, I was entirely involved in secondary data analysis. Now that I'm doing more research involving primary data collection, I have 'people' who do the actual work. So it was nice to meet the members of our Parent Advisory Group the other day on a rare field-trip out of the office to a local Sure Start Centre.

From Jean Adams: It was great to welcome two new members to the most recent meeting of the Fuse Communications Group last week: Peter van der Graaf, and the #fuseduck. I think they'll both make really valuable contributions.

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Just to remind you:

Each Thursday of 2014 we’ll try and post around four pictures on the Fuse blog that capture our weeks in public health research, from the awe-inspiring to the everyday and mundane. Given that more of the latter than the former exists in my life, I foresee problems compiling 208 images worth posting on my own. So this is going to have to be a group project. Send me an image (or images) with a sentence or two describing what aspect of your week in public health research they sum up and I’ll post them as soon as I can. You don’t have to send four together – we can mix and match images from different people in the same week.

Normal rules apply: images you made yourself are best; if you use someone else’s image please check you’re allowed to first; if anyone’s identifiable in an image, make sure they’re happy for it to be posted; nothing rude; nothing that breaks research confidentiality etc.

Also, this doesn’t mean we wont also be posting words. You word-based posts are, as always, much appreciated.