1I've been doing some research into what people in Britain think of doctors,
2the ones who work in general practice - the first call for medical care -
3and comparing this with the situation in a couple of other countries.
4I want to talk about the rationale behind what I decided to do.
5Now I had to set up my programme of research in three different countries
6so I approached postgraduates in my field in overseas departments,
7contacting them by email, to organize things for me at their end.
8I thought I would have trouble recruiting help
9but in fact everyone was very willing and sometimes their tutors got involved too.
10I had to give my helpers clear instructions about what kind of sample population I wanted them to use.
11I decided that people under 18 should be excluded
12because most of them are students or looking for their first job,
13and also I decided at this stage, just to focus on men who were in employment,
14and set up something for people who didn't have jobs
15and for employed women later on as a separate investigation.
16I specifically wanted to do a questionnaire,
17and interviews with a focus group.
18With the questionnaire, rather than limiting it to one specific point,
19I wanted to include as much variety as possible.
20I know questionnaires are a very controlled way to do things
21but I thought I could do taped interviews later on to counteract the effects of this.
22And the focus group may also prove useful in future,
23by targeting subjects I can easily return to,
24as the participants tend to be more involved.
25So I'm just collating the results now.
26At the moment, it looks as if, in the UK,
27despite the fact that newspapers continually report that people are unhappy with medical care,
28in fact, it is mainly the third level of care,
29which takes place in hospitals, that they are worried about.
30Government reforms have been proposed at all levels
31and although their success is not guaranteed,
32long-term hospital care is in fact probably less of an issue
33than the media would have us believe.
34However, I've still got quite a bit of data to look at.
35Certainly I will need to do more far-reaching research than I had anticipated
36in order to establish if people want extra medical staff invested in the community,
37or if they want care to revert to fewer, but larger, key medical units.
38The solution may well be something that can be easily implemented
39by those responsible in local government,
40with central government support, of course.
41This first stage has proved very valuable though.
42I was surprised by how willing most of the subjects were to get involved in the project -
43I had expected some unwillingness to answer questions honestly.
44But I was taken aback and rather concerned that something I thought I'd set up very well...
45didn't necessarily seem that way to everyone in my own department.
46I thought you might also be interested in some of the problems I encountered in collecting my data.
47There were odd cases that threw me -
48one of the subjects who I had approached while he was out shopping in town,
49decided to pull out when it came to the second round.
50It was a shame as it was someone who I would like to have interviewed more closely.
51And one of the first-year students I interviewed
52wanted reassurance that no names would be traceable from the answers.
53I was so surprised,
54because they think nothing of telling you about themselves and their opinions in seminar groups!
55Then, one of the people that I work with got a bit funny.
56The questions were quite personal
57and one minute he said he'd do it,
58then the next day he wouldn't,
59and in the end he did do it.
60It's hard not to get angry in that situation
61but I tried to keep focused on the overall picture in order to stay calm.
62The most bizarre case was a telephone interview I did with a teacher at a university in France.
63He answered all my questions in great detail -
64but then when I asked how much access he had to dangerous substances,
65he wouldn't tell me exactly what his work involved.