The role of citizenship as Early Warning Systems. Answers to this question.

Two post ago, I wrote about some topics we want to inquire in relation with our current research goal, that is, what would be the role of citizenship as Early Warning System, or, generally, in the biosurveillance realm. 

Through ResearchGate, two researches have contributed with their answers to this issue. Responses are quite interesting:

"Enrique,

Thanks for your excellent job of posing this question, and articulating many critical issues.  I will be following the discussion that I hope will ensue, and perhaps make some more comments of my own after seeing where the discussion goes.  It seems to me that this whole area has been inadequately defined and standardized.  I consider much of my work to be biosurveillance - looking for prevalence and distribution of pathogens in natural environments, primarily through the use of  sentinel organisms.  However, surveillance or biomonitoring (which term is best?) for vector  populations is also important.  I've attached a couple of relevant papers.  Best wishes, Bruce"

"Hi Enrique,

As you mentioned, the term ‚biosurveillance‘ is closely related to the term ‘bio-monitoring’, in which monitoring is less regular than one would expet it to be in a surveillance system. Originally, these terms were coined about 40 years ago, when environmental concerns grew because of the ever occurring industrial pollution. Standard books of the matter should give you an overview about the terms applied.

Are there tools where the citizen can contribute?

Usually, every citizen can forward his/her concern to the appropriate parties, the national or international bodies concerned with the issue. In the U.S. this is certainly the EPA.

A sentinel site is a reference site being used usually on a national base. Look at what the tropical docs say about sentinel sites for their research:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Society_of_Travel_Medicine

wish you all the best with your endeavor,

good luck!"

In fact, I am very interested in the International Society of Travel Medicine work, as well as the kind of stuff that the Global Oubreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) is carrying out (I didn't know this site), and I am sure we can slide for this websites in order to know new things and to collect new material and documents. 

In any case, we need for information about it, so we hope you would like to help us with your point of view or source of information.

By our part, we are wondering if it is feasible that one role of citizenship within biosurveillance may be alert global institutions when he/she or a relative present unusual symptoms, uploading it to the web through a smartphone or pc; simply pressing a button... not only seeking help, but to act as a Early System for a potential outbreak for which is necessary take actions previously within the Preparedness logic of government.

Photo Credit: Flickr, User New York National Guard

New virtual discussion: The use of Grounded Theory in qualitative research

In the current post I want to write about one new discussion emerged in ResearchGate (a social net where people with academic works can publish and share their papers and other kind of stuff and discuss whatever topic). The theme of this discussion is about the use of Grounded Theory and Case Study, their differences and utilities in qualitative research. 

As usually I have done, I offer here the transcription of the discussion, particularlly the central question and my answer, but you can consult the full discussion with several interesting answers here:

Key question:

"What's the difference between case study and grounded theory research? Does it make sense to use both?

Does one only use one research strategy or several? Is it possible/recommendable to use both GT and case study research for triangulation purposes? where is the difference??"

And my anwers was: 

"For me, Case Study and Grounded Theory are distint but compatible. That's to say, Case Study is the study of one phenomenon deeply, througout several ways (i.e) if you are studying gender discrimination, a case study is to gather empirical material from interviews, documents, ethnography... and thus, to know the gender discrimination.

About Grounded Theory, is a process of research "backwards" than usual, that's to say, tipically a research starts with an hipotesis and theories, and then you collect material in order to confirm (or not) this theories. Grounded theory works beginning from the data collect and ends with the theories, at the basis of the empirical data 

If you want, in my blog I have a post talking about Study Case and another way to "channel" the empirical material which differs from Grounded Theory, called "Thick Description", it can serve for your investigation better than Grounded Theory, I guess.

This is the link: http://ebaes.blogspot.com.es/2014/12/methodology-in-social-studies-of.html"

Although in my research group, we don't use Grounded Theory currently, is a very interesting methodology in order to "assemble" the discourse or the "product" of the empirical data' interpretation. I am sure if you read some answer in the discussion, you can make sense about his use. What do you think about Grounded Theory? Do you know any alternative to Grounded Theory or Study Case? Do you use this methodologies in different forms? You can join the discussion or we can talk here.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Sam Ladner