Instituto de diabetes.

Smith, Julia

My team's research dealt with diabetes. Specifically, to what extent people understand disease progression, treatment, and risk factors. One of our research sites was the Instituto Nacional de Diabetes.

Each time it was a little awkward approaching someone to ask if they were diabetic and if they would be willing to participate in an interview. Yet people were more than happy to speak with us. Even if the patient was not diabetic, she often started talking about a daughter or a mother who was.

Many interviews ended with patients showing us pictures of their family or talking about something that was really important to them. We learned when doing our interviews that you cannot adhere to a script. Although we carefully crafted questions, the best interviews were ones where the script was barely used, where questions and answers flowed in genuine conversation.

In ethnographic research I think it is far more important to hear someone's untampered story than to dig for a specific fact. During one interview, a patient started to cry as she mentioned her diabetic daughter who had recently died. Her outpouring of emotion took me by surprise, but it also opened up our conversation to become even more personal.

With each interview, we became more confident as researchers. Our conversations became more fluid and interesting, while our potential findings became even more meaningful.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

--Julia Smith '16, biology and society