Let the Research Begin!

So the last bullet point in my doesn't-do-the-last-year-of-my-life-justice blog entry talked about the research that I will be doing at Push to Walk. At least as soon as I have the time to begin data collection!  Here is a link to a  press release we did about it.

In a nutshell, for a long time we have needed a better system than what we have been using to assess the strength and progress of our clients.  However, as a small non-profit, we don't have the money for expensive equipment or access to facilities that have them.  So what do we do?  Buy a relatively non-expensive piece of equipment called a muscle testing dynamometer and invent our own way to use it to evaluate our clients.

But how do we know that the system we come up with is any good?  By testing it out.  We will have multiple trainers evaluate multiple clients, and compare the results each trainer got to make sure that no matter who evaluates a client's strength, the same results are obtained.  Using statistics (yay, fun!) we can establish whether or not the new evaluation system is reliable.  That is to say, we will see if the new evaluation system accurately and consistently measures the change (or lack thereof) in strength of our clients at various joints in the body.



It was important to get our study approved by an Institutional Review Board, or IRB.  Why?  The main reason is because doing research on human subjects and attempting to get it published without IRB approval is illegal!  IRBs exist to protect any human research subjects.  Before we could embark on our research, we had to write up a proposal outlining our research, what it entailed, how we would ensure the safety of our subjects, and many other details.  The IRB at William Paterson University agreed to oversee our research, and they approved it!

So in a few weeks, when we have enough trainer staff to test out new system on clients, we'll begin our research on the reliability of the NIMS test.  I have a ton of other research ideas I want to discuss, but in the interest of keeping my blogs short and readable, I'll save those for another entry.

Take three...

Well the "Tips of the Week" failed pretty miserably eh?  Last blog post was almost a year ago.  That is pretty weak.

At the gentle, friendly, constructive encouragement of my younger brother, I have decided to try yet again to maintain a somewhat regular blog.  If the last year is any indication, writing a blog entry every week for the sake of writing a blog every week probably isn't going to happen.  And its better that way, because if I write only when I'm compelled to, I'll write better entries anyway.

So what has happened since my last blog post?  Here is a list, in (attempted) chronological order, of things that have happened, most of which I won't elaborate on enough to show how significant they were:

• I went full-time at Push to Walk, and eventually became the Program Director.  I still LOVE my job and couldn't imagine doing anything better.  I am now living the new American dream (I got a job after college.)
• I got engaged to my girlfriend of almost (at the time) two years, Mary.  I still don't know how I got lucky enough to have her in my life.  Every day with her is a blessing and I'm looking forward to spending my life with her.  You can read more about us at www.sutorfamily.com.
• I drove my new fiance insane with my obsessive following of the throwing events at the Olympics.
• I went to the Working 2 Walk conference in California, the annual conference that promotes advocacy and research for a cure for spinal cord injuries.  I got even more out of it than I did the previous year in Baltimore, made some new friends, and got tons of new information.  It reaffirmed my current passion for being a soldier in the movement to cure spinal cord injuries.
• I designed (with help from others at Push to Walk) a new system to evaluate the strength of our clients, and received approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of William Paterson University to have their help and oversight as I investigate the reliability of our new system.  Hopefully this is the first of many studies that will come out of Push to Walk!

I'll cut myself off there for now.  I want to write a blog about the current research project we have coming up at P2W as well as other things going on at work, but if I write it now I'll just incoherently ramble on forever and nobody will read the whole thing.  So until then, I'm goin' for a walk...