Primary Research

For this portion of primary research, I engaged in informal semi structured conversations with members of the Gallipolis community in their downtown. The downtown area was selected due to its function as a public environment that is surrounded by a public park, local businesses, restaurants, and residential areas. This allowed me to engage a variety of individuals that could be more representative of the general population of Gallipolis. Research for this section was done on Tuesday, September 8 during the day. This portion of research was done in concordance with recruitment for my survey. Individuals were approached, briefly introduced to the survey topic and purpose, and invited to participate in my survey. 

If participants expressed interest in engaging in further discussion of the topic, I began to engage in informal semi structured conversations with the individual. Participants were encouraged to share their experiences of the healthcare system with follow up questions asked in relation to the natural flow of conversation and topics that were brought up. Notes were then taken on relevant information immediately after the conversation was concluded. These conversations were conducted to gain an exploratory view of people’s experiences, perceptions, concerns, and themes that may not have been captured in the structured survey.

Attribution for coding: Approximately ~60% of this work derives from the author’s original Gallipolis Informal Conversation Notes and primary field observations; ~30% reflects the author’s independent research framing, recoding, categorization, interpretation, visualization, and iterative revision; and ~10% reflects AI assistance with preliminary coding, analysis, synthesis, spreadsheet organization, drafting, and editing. All interpretations and conclusions remain the responsibility of the author.

One interesting finding from these semi structured conversations was the prevalence of individuals that did not use the healthcare system. Of the twelve individuals that engaged in further conversation, six of them do not use any healthcare services. That is 50%, which is a significant proportion when considering how important the utilization of healthcare services can be to health and life outcomes. While it is important to note that this is not truly representative of the general population of Gallipolis, this is an interesting insight to explore. Individuals did not disclose exact reasons as to why they do not utilize healthcare services. This could be something to further investigate.

No generative AI was used in the writing of this section.