First-time Research Experience

“Publish or perish” sounds scary enough to me and my fellow students in the medical school that we forced ourselves to plunge into the mysterious world of scientific research. After a month of preparation, I did my first data collection today in a dense residential area (also called a kampung) in East Jakarta, and I found out that there’s only a microscopic line between publishing and perishing.

Some background info: Six of us are doing a research on basic immunization in six areas around Jakarta. Per government regulation, basic immunization in Indonesia consists of BCG, DTP, polio, hepatitis B, and measles vaccines; immunization schedule is also set out in the regulation, albeit a little different from the pediatric society’s recommendation since the government has to consider the public health aspects. We want to know the coverage of the immunizations, and find out what factors are correlated to completing the immunization program on time. In theory, we are giving out questionnaires to mothers with toddlers; in practice, we’re dealing with restless young mothers, crying tots, and people who are too eager for a little souvenir.

Even before we planned anything, I had already realized that it is foolish to think that a field research can go smoothly without any hiccups. Anyway, that’s not a reason to let everything go wild; so we contacted the Kampung Melayu posyandu (community health service for toddlers) coordinator and delineated our plans for the research. She was extremely helpful and resourceful, thus lifting a lot of burden from our amateur shoulders. She took care of the location and contacted the research subjects. And in one day, we had the best plan ever. Or so we thought.

D-Day. Curiously enough, our research mentor called it “turun penelitian” a.k.a. getting down –and dirty- with the research. The day started peacefully. We settled in the place, and a couple of mothers with their toddlers came. We happily acted our part as the eager and caring researchers. Those first mothers were very lucky: we recited the whole ethics stuffs, played nice with their tots, helped them fill out the questionnaire attentively, and gave them a proper goodbye. All the time we were totally oblivious to the impending chaos.

Throngs of mothers just appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The new crowd suddenly packed our research spot and bombarded us, if not whined, with requests. “I haven’t got the questionnaire!”, “Can I have a pen, please?”, “I am in a hurry! Help me fill this out!”. Our stock of questionnaire simply flew everywhere into the hands of the overexcited subjects. The niceties were shamelessly replaced by hurried efficiency. Instead of the calm introduction, we had to tell them to complete the questionnaire straight away. (We still paid attention to the consent form, so no ethics problem there.)

Despite the main theme of chaos, there were many bits of interesting insight and experience there. One of the most serious insight is that quite a lot of the mothers lost their child’s immunization record to frequent floods. Only then the fact struck us that Kampung Melayu is dangerously flood prone. Apparently, floods in the area can reach the second floor. Second, their interest in our research should have been expected since the kampung is one of the university’s favorite research areas. They know that there will be souvenirs for them. Hence, they come for the souvenirs. Can’t blame them, and we do need them.

There were several mothers who caught our attention amid the choking crowd. There was this one mother who just stared blankly with a pen in her hand and questionnaire in front of her. My friend expected that, as she helps others with their forms, the mother would have finished hers. My friend was completely shocked to find her spacing out without any ink on her questionnaire. Another mother annoyingly asked my other friend to “serve” her first, because she had to breastfeed her son. That would have been fine, if not for the fact that there are people who got there before her and she could have breastfed her son while waiting for her turn. I don’t know why she insisted that she must fill her forms before breastfeeding. In the end, she did her questionnaire as her son had his milk in tranquility.

Surprisingly, the crowd cleared out as fast as it appeared. We instantly had a stack of filled forms with precious data, and also a chance to look at each others’ freaked out faces. No one dared to think that our first work would soon be over, but fortunately we finished the day in one piece. I wouldn’t bet on our sanity though.

All this stuff, and we still have 5 places to go. Yet, I proudly say that I feel no regret. It is a unique experience, and we won’t be able to avoid it anyway. It is a matter of time, whether we get this now and become prepared or years later when we have more things to stress about and are unprepared. After all, we had a good laugh on our way home, thanks to this research.