Week 1

Welcome back to my blog!

This week I focused on preparing for my experiment that will begin as I transition into my onsite placement starting next week. Using previous experiments and guidelines from the National Institute of Health, I created a comprehensive – yet understandable – survey that will be passed out to patients at Manhattan Integrative Cardiovascular to gauge a sample size for my experiment. The survey asks for the age and gender of the patient, as well as their main reason for visiting the cardiologist, if they have been previously diagnosed with hypertension or other disorders with high blood pressure as a symptom, their usual at-home and in-office blood pressures, whether they have ever practiced mindfulness techniques before their appointment, and if they are open to participating in my experiment.

In addition to the general survey I have created, I also worked on my experimental survey this past week. Once I establish my experimental groups, I will give them a written response form that will provide them with space to express feelings of gratitude they may have. In the previous study I examined to create my form (Enko, 2021), the researchers had participants focus on interpersonal gratitude expressions, so they sent text messages conveying their feelings to people they were grateful to. While this can be more effective for many as opposed to reflective gratitude, such as gratitude journaling focused on “individual contemplation of grateful feelings”, it is much harder to implement as most people would shy away from any form of confrontation, even something as positive as expressing gratitude for another (Enko 2021). My study will explore reflective gratitude and my response form will prompt experiment participants to describe one incident in the past day that they are grateful for, a person they are grateful to, and something or someone they take for granted.

Going forward, I will begin to distribute my surveys and response forms starting next week and begin my experiment soon after, and I will continue to research and collect data from medical databases and previous studies.

Thank you for reading my blog! See you next week!

Bibliography:
Enko, J., Behnke, M., Dziekan, M. et al. Gratitude Texting Touches the Heart: Challenge/Threat Cardiovascular Responses to Gratitude Expression Predict Self-initiation of Gratitude Interventions in Daily Life. J Happiness Stud 22, 49–69 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-020-00218-8 “HIPAA Privacy Rule and Its Impacts on Research.”

HIPAA Privacy Rule and Its Impacts on Research, https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/clin_research.asp. Accessed 30 March 2023.

“Guiding Principles for Ethical Research.” National Institutes of Health (NIH), https://www.nih.gov/health-information/nih-clinical-research-trials-you/guiding-principles-ethical-research. Accessed 30 March 2023.