Closing my questionnaire.

As I write this, the finalization of my questionnaire is underway. It's been a few months of pre-testing, adapting, pre-testing, adapting, pre-testing, and adapting again, but we're finally ready to close the survey. It's incredibly exciting to be able to start conducting my field work, the very essence of why I came to Brazil.

I didn't expect my questionnaire to change as much as it did when I first arrived, but I'm already grateful to my research advisors for helping me mold the questionnaire to a more concrete survey instrument. It will be much easier to analyze my results if I am working from a solid survey instrument. In addition, it's been interesting conversing with my advisors about the effects of my research project, aspects I need to think about when starting to write the discussion of my project, etc. You realize how important it is to really understand the culture of the country when creating a discussion and analyzing results. I'm only a resident in Rio for nine months-- it's not enough time to capture the nuances and subtleties of what I'm finding-- especially since my project is very much studying the way--the culture-- of the residents of Rio de Janeiro.

One thing I anticipated before I arrived--but now understand-- is how different the timeline here is to the United States. In the US, we have a tendency to just "get things done," while here, people tend to think much more before they take actions. I also didn't realize just how slowly things move in December and January... the same time period I wanted to start my research.

But this works out well, I think, because I have a much stronger questionnaire, and I will be able to conduct my field work with certainty that my questionnaire is as good as it can get, here, now, in Brazil.