Memo+36+updated+pilot+research+(Dan+F)

As part of my Economics major requirements, I am required to take one additional elective in economics. I've been working on a way to make this an advantage to my thesis work rather than just an additional work load. I will be spending next semester doing independent study with one of John Gowdy's graduate students on economic development and aid. We have left the format very open ended so that we can pursue our interests more easily and the papers I write for that course will serve as a first pass that can be reconstituted more coherently when I restructure and rewrite about the information in my thesis. This will act as additional literature review and look into proposed solutions as well as the impact of certain types of organizations that i have so far failed to encounter adequately in the literature. I will pursue other courses of research and data collection in the meantime (I realize I am lacking on this front), but I feel that setting up this independent study is a highly beneficial step forward. I will update my proposal in light of this new information when I have finalized the independent study. I will be doing some of the readings for this proposed course during winter break so that I can stay ahead of my final due dates for both my thesis and course writings.

As far as the interviews, I have a list of just over half of my proposed interviews (they can be found at the top of my profile, but they are not very detailed), but I have not made contact and I am not entirely sure where I will get the rest of the interviews from. I may pursue some of the authors of the abstracts I looked at online last class. I also feel that I need more interview questions to round out what I am trying to comment on.

In my proposal I indicate that I would like to do email interviews rather than live interviews but I am not sure how acceptable that is. I wanted to pursue this direction for obvious reasons but I am not sure if they are the right reasons. I'm not a very good interviewer. I find myself searching for my next question more than effectively listening to what is being said. There are other benefits as to email interviews as well though. I would not have to transcribe, the interviewees can still go on a tangent and I can still ask questions (probably better worded questions) based on the tangents through subsequent emails, interviewees can fill out the information at their leisure, and language barriers that may exist will be overcome more easily. Is my line of reasoning flawed? Do I have to do more personal interviews?