DBA: Methodology chapter

My last post on this subject, exactly one month ago, had me excitedly telling about the book, "You and your action research project". My plan then was to read the book then incorporate whatever needed to be added to the methodology chapter of my thesis. In the end, I didn't read that book exclusively; I looked for other sources of material as well. As I was reading, I was also writing the section of the thesis entitled "Action Research - the theory"; I had to describe what AR itself is, how it differs from traditional research (primarily by siting the researcher at the centre of things instead of being abstracted out) and as a result of this, presenting arguments about validity and rigour. Here it was important to bring in viewpoints that appear in other works, so in the end there must be at least six or seven works cited in this section.

When I had finished this, I went on to describe the actual methodology used in AR; for this, a paper by Näslund et al. (2010) was invaluable[1]. Whilst not containing the AR cycle that I obtained from another paper, it contained a framework for conducting the research where the topic being researched is supply chain management. Most AR has been carried out on topics concerned with education, so this specific research is closer to mine. After displaying the framework, I had to explain all the terms contained within, sometimes referencing Näslund et al. and sometimes others. I worked on this for several hours but didn't finish in that time slot. The rest was completed during the week. After I completed this section, I wrote a brief summary of the entire chapter. Then I realised that I had completed what I had planned to write during the month, so I sent the current version off to my supervisor. 

After implementing any changes that he might suggest, my next task is to plan and carry out a pilot study for the thesis. This is where theory meets reality: I have to take all that I have written during the past month and actually do it. I've been thinking about which case I can use: this seems to be somewhat problematic as there isn't anything obvious that I can research. Whichever enhancement I choose has to be new (i.e. not examined in my previous research); one example that I could use is the development of time/task management, but this was implemented several months ago, meaning that I can't 'accompany' it from the beginning which is what I would like to do. There isn't anything on the books at the moment; a fair amount of my time is creating and adapting reports and procedures that I have written for the 'nesting' machine.

Actually there is something that is currently receiving a low priority but looks ready for a revival: it's a similar enhancement to one that already exists. It's meant to allow salespeople to reserve quantities of materials for a type of product called a 'screen' (I'm certain that this is not what I would call a screen in English). What's special here is that both a height and a width have to be specified. I shall now start trying to collect all the emails that I have on this subject: this is 'primary' material.

References

1. Näslund, D., Kale, R. and Paulraj, A. (2010): "Action research in supply chain management—a framework for relevant and rigorous research", Journal of Business Logistics, 31(2), 331-355.

Has the culprit been found (hypertension)?

I wrote a week ago about the enzyme/hormone renin and the blood test that I had done, whose result I did not understand. A few days ago, I was notified about another result, presumably from the same blood sample, this time for aldosterone; again, the units defeated me and so I was unable to figure out what my aldosterone to renin ratio is.

This morning, my specialist called me on my cell phone (that's personal service for you) and explained that my renin level is exceedingly low (that's why it appeared as "less than 1.96") and that the aldosterone level is high. This suggests where the cause of my hypertension lays. The next step is to perform a 24-hour urinary excretion of aldosterone test: the patient eats a high-salt diet for a few days followed by urine collections over a 24-hour period. Instead of changing my diet, I will be prescribed special salt tablets in order to cause 'sodium load' and then I collect my urine.

The specialist will be able to make an informed diagnosis on the basis of this test. 

I wonder whether this means that I can cancel the special ultrasound test that I have to do at the end of May.

How to deal with shoes that are a bit too large (and are ordered without trying them on)

I wrote three years ago about buying shoes via the Internet, where I noted that "as my shoe size varies between 42 and 43, I decided to play safe and ordered them in size 43". The type of summer shoe that I like lasts only for one year so in 2019 I bought a new pair of shoes size 43 in a shop (obviously I had forgotten that I had an extra pair waiting at home). That same day I discovered that those shoes were a bit too big, so my wife returned to the shop the following day and bought a pair size 42. I wore these from April 2019 until the "end of the season", probably October, by which time there was a hole in the fabric of one shoe and the other wasn't in too good a shape. I wore these shoes whilst in Greece and very much liked them.

Strangely enough, I don't remember what shoes I wore last year*, assuming that I wore shoes - I had problems with bloated legs and feet as well as working from home - but at the beginning of this year I knew that I would have to order shoes via the Internet (shoe shops opened only a few weeks ago). I should have read my blog where I would have discovered that I had an extra pair of shoes from 2018 that probably would fit my feet. Had I known this, I probably wouldn't have ordered, but fool that I am, I ordered two pairs of shoes size 42. Oops: when they came, I discovered that they were slightly too small and had no option but to give them away (I tried wearing one pair for a day but it was clear that they would not be suitable; they would be impossible to wear should my feet swell, as they did at the beginning of this week when we had a heat wave/sharav with temperatures approaching 40°C).

I then checked my shoe cupboard and discovered a few pairs of shoes that might be suitable candidates for wearing this year, only they are size 43; shoes too big are even worse than shoes too small. It was then that inspiration struck: why not search the Internet with the question "How to deal with shoes that are a bit too large"? This led me to an article that talked about "heel grips" that effectively reduce the size of the shoe. 

Googling "heel grips" led me to this page; I promptly ordered one set of six heel grips. As this is via Amazon and there was a delivery charge, the grips arrived yesterday, two weeks after ordering. Much better than a slow boat from China. I took from the shoe cupboard the size 43 shoes from 2019, transferred to them the thick, rubber, inner soles from the size 42 shoes from 2019, and tried them on for size. Too big. My wife added one heel grip to the left shoe and one to the right; the right hand shoe fit well but the left was still a bit loose so she added another grip to this one. Now both shoes fit well, although they feel a bit strange as there is a wire running through the middle of the heel grip that I can feel. I'll probably get used to this in time.

Moral of this story: if I am going to order shoes via the Internet, then order them size 43 and add heel grips until the shoes fit. Secondary moral: read this blog first! Then check the shoe cupboard to see what's in stock.

* I remember now what I wore: a pair of cheap 42s probably also from China, with  thin soles that used to get stuck to my feet and ride up when I would take them off.  Quite possibly the spare thick soles wouldn't fit. There were times when I couldn't wear them last year because of my feet swelling. A few weeks ago when the weather got warmer, I asked my wife to glue the soles so at least they wouldn't ride up. These shoes are ok as a reserve pair but I wouldn't like to wear them all the time. Of course, working from home means that I put on shoes for only an hour or two a day and so these shoes are good enough.

Yet another new song ("There she goes")

I thought that I was taking a break from song-writing, but when I sat down to play a bit on the piano on Saturday, a new tune, albeit simple, took form. I also used to think that I was unable to write songs that use only three chords (tonic, subdominant and dominant, eg C, F and G, aka I IV V)  or four chords (the extra being iv, A minor in the key of C), as well as the extremely weak movement of I -> vi (a major chord to its relative minor), but I was wrong on both accounts. This new song (in the key of F, but no Bb, so still only white notes) starts I vi I vi before moving to V and thence to IV. The V chord doesn't sound like a dominant and there's no major cadence, thus the song sounds somewhat modal.

After playing this a few times on the piano then recording it onto my mobile phone, I sequenced the tune on the computer. From the beginning I envisaged a minimal arrangement; it started off with a harpsichord playing arpeggios with a piano joining in on the second verse, but after a day or two, I decided to remove the piano, move the harpsichord to the second verse and have an atmospheric pad play the whole way through (all of two minutes). A piccolo plays the instrumental lines; I think that I must have pitched this an octave lower than what a piccolo usually plays as the sound is 'thicker' than I would have expected. There was a very simple bass part but I replaced that yesterday evening with a walking bass line. No drums; I have often wanted to record simple songs in the style of The Blue Nile, but their drum machine often annoys me. This arrangement doesn't require any percussion (aural punctuation).

And words! Listening to the arrangement at one stage, some words floated into my head - "There she goes, with a ribbon in her hair". The ribbon was later transformed into a feather, and then I started looking for a rhyme for 'hair'. It turns out that there are many rhymes for 'hair'; in the end, all twelve lines of the lyric use the same rhyming sound - hair, care, where, dare, tear (as in clothing, not eyes), share, pair, rare, air, fair, mare and spare. This was a serendipitous bonus.

Now all I need is a little time to record the vocals.

Rennin vs Renin

As part of the tests that I am doing in order to find the cause of my high blood pressure (which finally is reaching normal values, thanks to the heavy drug regime), I had to have (yet another) blood test. The nurse told me that it was for "Renine" (of course, she spoke to me so I didn't see how it was written down) - this was pronounced as if it were a French name that rhymes with Janine.

This sounded strange to me as the only rennin that I know of is used in the making of yoghurt and is derived from a cow's stomach. Of course, I wasn't going to argue with the nurse, who said that the blood has to be taken in the urban medical centre (where I had the covid vaccine) and anyway it requires a 12 hour fast. What could be so special about this test, I wondered?

When I got home, I looked up renin and discovered that it is a hormone that the human body secretes that plays a part in regulating blood pressure - it's good to know that my kidney doctor is leaving no stone unturned (pun unintentional, but it's a good one). When I had the test done, I asked the nurse what was so unusual about this test; apparently the only reason that I had to go to the medical centre was that there was a driver waiting to take my blood (and presumably anyone else who had the same test) to a laboratory in Jerusalem where they must specialise in this rare test.

After a day or two, I was notified of the result: "Less than 1.96". This result has me baffled, primarily because there are no units given. Also, "less than" implies that 1.96 whatevers is some cut off value, but this doesn't sit well with what's written in the Wikipedia entry (not that I trust this). Renin is usually measured as the plasma renin activity (PRA) that is measured specially in case of certain diseases that present with hypertension or hypotension. PRA is also raised in certain tumors. A PRA measurement may be compared to a plasma aldosterone concentration (PAC) as a PAC/PRA ratio. That doesn't help very much.

Moving to plasma renin activity, one reads that Reference ranges for blood tests of plasma renin activity can be given both in mass and in international units (μIU/mL or equivalently mIU/L, improperly shown as μU/mL or U/L, confusing mcU/mL used where Greek μ not available), with the former being roughly convertible to the latter by multiplying with 11.2.

Then a table is presented, which is even more confusing

Unit	Lower limit	Upper limit
ng/(mL*hour)	0.29, 1.9	3.7
μIU/mL	3.3, 21	41

How can one source have a lower limit of 0.29 whereas another source has a lower limit of 1.9 that is 6.5 times higher?? And how does "less than 1.96" fit into this? Is this lower than the lower limit, assuming that the Israeli health ministry has decided to use 1.96 as the lower limit? Does "less than 1.96" mean that the laboratory can't measure less than this, so it's not possible to know how much lower the result is than the lower limit? So many questions, so few answers.

I haven't made a followup appointment yet as I have to have a special ultrasound scan at the end of May, when I am also seeing an urologist, so theoretically I will be in the dark until June. I suspect, however, that I will get a note from my clinic stating the result and my family doctor's understanding of the result.

An ultrasound scan that I underwent a month or so ago shows that there are slightly abnormal results with regard to the bladder (hence the urologist) but these might be normal, considering my age, and may or may not have anything to do with my blood pressure.

You and your action research project

In the feedback from my unsuccessful viva examination, the examiners wrote "It is recommended that the Action Research method be adopted whereby the proposed framework is implemented in a sample of enhancement projects within one or more case companies so that meaningful empirical data can be collected and analysed." Well, that sounds doable. But what is Action Research (AR)?

I spent a few days trying to find out about this topic. There are a few papers that talk about implementing AR within a doctoral thesis, and I even discovered that someone in my DBA programme published a thesis using this approach a few years ago. But almost all of these paper (and especially the thesis) don't explain very well what AR is and they certainly don't explain how to use AR as the research method for a thesis.

I continued looking and eventually stumbled upon "You and Your Action Research" by Jean McNiff and Jack Whitehead. Amazon are selling this for silly money ($200.76!!!) so I'm glad I found the book in pdf format. Not only that, this is exactly the book that I need: it explains what research itself is, what action research is and how to conduct the research. Reading the opening chapters causes me to realise that I could have done with this book two or three years ago, and that huge swathes of my thesis will have to be rewritten.

I completed - as far as I was concerned - the literature review a week ago. One criticism that was raised during the viva was that I found and presented one model of engineering change - then stopped. I should have presented more models then contrasted between them. So the review as it currently stands has five separate models of engineering change along with commentary and comparison. Only now, after reading the opening chapters of YAYAR, I wonder whether I need any such models. 

Continuing on from the literature review, I pasted in most of the theoretical methodology chapter that discusses various research paradigms. Again, it looks like this material will have to be heavily revised. Anyway, I hit a brick wall after the research paradigms because this is where my ideas are supposed to enter the thesis. So I contacted my supervisor in order to have a discussion that will take place tomorrow. Of course now the discussion will be far different to the one that I had originally planned. I think that I will spend the next month reading the book and contemplating what has to be added to the thesis, along with how I continue the research.

Going back to the opening paragraph, what is AR? 

Action research is conducted by practitioners who regard themselves as researchers. It therefore goes by other names such as practice-based research, practitioner research, practitioner-led research and practitioner-based research. The practice base of action research means that all people in all contexts who are investigating the situation they are in can become researchers, regardless of their age, status, social setting, or social or professional positioning. The situations may be in virtually any context – in the workplace, in the home or in an aeroplane – and in any personal or professional arena. Because action research is always done by practitioners within practitioners within a particular social situation, it is insider research, not outsider research, which means that the researcher is inside the situation, and will inevitably influence what is happening by their presence... This is one reason why action research is so popular: it puts practitioners in control of their own practices – but this also carries the responsibilities of offering explanations for those practices.

The ‘action’ of action research is always about improving practice, however practice is understood. Processes of social improvement begin with personal improvement, and personal improvement is grounded in personal learning. Think about the idea of action, as outlined above. You can watch television; this is usually understood as ‘activity’, without involving ideas about improvement. When the action is about contributing to other people’s learning, however, it must involve ideas about improvement. Investigating how the action has contributed to improvement becomes a process of knowledge creation; offering explanations for how and why this has happened becomes a process of theory generation. Action research is different from traditional social scientific research, which aims to understand and describe a social situation in terms of something ‘out there’. 

It is a process that helps you as a practitioner to develop a deep understanding of what you are doing as an insider researcher, so it has both a personal and social aim. The personal aim is to improve your learning in order to use that learning to help you improve your behaviours. Its social aim is to contribute to other people’s learning to help them improve their behaviours. Both are equally important and interdependent. When you make your research public by writing and disseminating your report and ideas, you offer an account of how your learning may or may not have influenced the situation.