Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: American Women, Competing Information, and the Management of Midlife Risks

研究生Jennifer Jo Thompson在Mark Nichter博士的指导下，将当代美国更年期的经历作为理解风险概念如何在日常经验中运作的关键场所，以及人类如何利用个人经验以及专家和外行资源来管理感知到的风险。这位研究人员将调查美国西南部女性如何经历更年期，以及科学、媒体和大众媒体上流传的关于更年期风险的相互竞争的信息如何影响女性的更年期管理策略。为了为这项研究生成数据，研究人员将使用多种人种学方法，包括对围绝经期妇女的访谈和焦点小组，对医疗保健提供者的采访，在与更年期相关的教育和信息会议上的参与者观察，以及对科学、媒体和大众媒体中关于更年期的描述的仔细监测。将使用定性开放编码和重新编码技术对数据进行分析，以确定主题和主题模式。通过关注风险概念如何在宏大理论的层面上运作，而是作为日常经验的一部分，这项研究有助于理解人们在日常生活中如何谈判信息和风险话语，这些话语是如何铭刻在身体上的，以及身体实践是如何形成的。从应用的角度来看，这项研究提供了一个基于范例案例研究的模型，用于调查多元化医疗环境中的患者决策，其中公众越来越多地接触到关于主流和替代疗法的风险和好处的模棱两可或相互矛盾的信息。这项研究也将有助于研究生的教育。

Graduate student Jennifer Jo Thompson, supervised by Dr. Mark Nichter, takes the contemporary American experience of menopause as a key site for understanding how notions of risk operate in everyday experience, and how human beings use personal experience, and expert and lay resources to manage perceived risks. The researcher will investigate how women in the southwestern United States experience menopause, and how competing information about the risks related to menopause circulating in science, the media, and the popular press influences women's menopause management strategies. To generate data for this study, the researcher will use multiple ethnographic methods including interviews and focus groups with perimenopausal women, interviews with healthcare providers, participant observation at menopause-related educational and information sessions, and careful monitoring of the representations of menopause in science, media, and popular press. Data will be analyzed using qualitative open-coding and re-coding techniques to identify themes and thematic patterns. By focusing on how notions of risk operate not on the level of grand theory, but as a part of everyday experience, this research contributes to the understanding of how people negotiate information and risk discourses in their daily lives, the way these discourses are inscribed on bodies, and the way bodily practices are shaped in response. From an applied perspective, this study provides a model based on an exemplar case study for investigating patient decision-making in a pluralistic healthcare environment where the public is increasingly exposed to ambiguous or contradictory information about the risks and benefits of mainstream and alternative therapies. The research also will contribute to the education of a graduate student.