Research Questions

1.  How does body image (physique and general sex appeal) effect the ambition/confidence of a client?

2.  What body language cues should a dietitian be on the lookout for while with a client?

3.  What kind of research data could be of possible interest in the future (about 5-10years) .

Textual Analysis

Textual Analysis of an Article from the Dietetics Field

            In R. P. Cant and R. A. Aroni’s article, “Exploring dietitians’ verbal and nonverbal communication skills for effective dietitian-patient communication,”   the authors intend to report the findings of a two-phase study that examines Australian dietitians involved in clinical practice for the purpose of learning about how dietitians conduct their communication with individual patients in the process of nutrition education.  To do so, the authors explain the study methodically with inclusive statistics and common knowledge from within the health industry.

            Beginning with the organization of the article, the authors made sure that the content would be easy to follow.  Following basic expectations, the article is outlined by an introductory foundation, assembled with informative infrastructure, and then completed with a final outcome.  Information within the articles is segmented in a sequential order that corresponds with the order of the study while incorporating explanations along the side.  Each paragraph is definitely separated by specific topic areas, rarely providing an opportunity for talking points to overlap, except within the transition sentences.   For example: the article is introduced, then the “methods” used in the study are briefly explained (it is assumed that the audience has, at the very least, basic knowledge about the methods), and the bulk of the rest is dedicated to discussing the results, wrapped with a neat summation in the conclusion.  This type of layout for literature is one of the most basic kinds, yet it is effective and concise, which is both the minimal and maximal effort towards writing style the authors’ colleagues should expect.  There really couldn’t be a better way of organizing an article.

The reason why the information has to be organized is so that other professionals in the field can easily flow through the material and understand what is going on, step by step.  How do we know other professionals within this field will be reading this particular article?  The answer is: jargon.  The style of writing calls for diction from the perspective of a dietitian, therefore limiting the audience to a handful of individuals who already carry the background knowledge to pick up the information “under the radar.”  A reader from the general public may not understand what the authors mean when they say that “Chi-square and Spearman’s rank correlation analyses were used to examine relationships between variables.”  Even if the reader tried to grasp the gist from the context, he or she would only read on to discover that “P<0.05 was considered statistically significant…and found to be reliable when 62 items were tested because the Cronbach alpha coefficient was 0.86, indicating good internal consistency.”  Clearly, the general public was not taken into consideration while writing this article, but rather, an audience assumed to ascertain the information with their own background knowledge. 

In tandem with organization and style of content, the way in which the authors chose to deliver the material is also effective in conveying the results of the survey.  Wrapped within the text of the article, the authors have integrated figures, diagrams, and tables with data that aids the reader in the process of explanation.  For example: the article contains a simple figure that shows, with arrows and shapes, the outline of the experiment step-by-step; this figure also contains brief descriptions of each step within the shapes.  Seeing as how not everyone can learn solely via text, the visual provides an alternative mode to absorbing the material, making the text more conceivable within the readers’ minds.  There are also tables with both quantitative and qualitative data (since the study is separated by the same idea of qualitative versus quantitative.)  Information delivered in this fashion serves to report the findings of the study in a statistical manner.  With numbers to look at, the interested dietitians who read the article will be able to examine the results for themselves and evaluate the study with their own judgment. 

In publishing the article, R. P. Cant and R. A. Aroni have allowed other professionals within the same field to add relatable information to their reservoir of knowledge for future use.  By choosing to report the results of the study through practical organization, meticulous word choice, and clarifying visuals, Cant and Aroni have effectively conveyed important information to a specific audience of interested dietitians. 

Works Cited

Cant, R. P. and Aroni, R. A. (2008), Exploring dietitians’ verbal and nonverbal communication skills for effective dietitian–patient communication. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, 21: 502–511. 

Article for Textual Analysis

Exploring dietitians' verbal and nonverbal communication skills for effective dietitian-patient communication:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-277X.2008.00883.x/full

Visual Analysis

David Mena

Facebook Page Analysis

The image I chose is a screenshot of what the public eye would see if they were to search for my Facebook page.  Social media plays a huge role in modern-day society; both the professional market and consumers alike take advantage of this fact.  For this reason, I believe that the impression of a social-media page is just as important as the impression we communicate in person.

In this piece, I am the author and, since it's a Facebook page, I am simply showing the world that I have a life and it's filled with status/picture-worthy moments that others should like (hahaha). In most circumstances, the audience of a Facebook page is a large group of friends, mostly acquaintances, who might be interested in keeping up with my personal life and vice versa.  With the settings of Facebook, however, it is possible for anyone in the general public that has a Facebook profile to become part of the audience.  Hopefully, none of these strangers are stalkers or serial killers, but rather people who are interested in knowing more about you for appropriate reasons.  For example: a client.
If a client were to consider me as their personal dietitian for hire, they would probably find out a lot of information about me as a professional on my business webpage (or something like that).  They could also have the thought of checking my Facebook page as well.  Sure, the business page may have a plethora of wonderful credentials and interesting numbers, and I might even seem like a perfect candidate in person, but social-media has the potential of tearing that all down to the ground.  In the professional fields, keeping your Facebook page in check is just as important as keeping your slacks and ties in presentable condition.

  Your professional credibility can go down the drain if your Facebook page has pictures from the last party you went to and a recent status about how much you hate the President of the United States.  Even if your party days are over, Facebook kept that picture someone posted of you sleeping on the floor while someone drew penises on your face five years ago.  I'm sure many people out there are in the market for a dietitian who will prescribe more alcohol and less sleep, but chances are that most people wouldn't trust such a "professional."  My page, however, needs to be analyzed in detail. 

On my Facebook page, as of February 16 of 2014 and as a viewer from the general public, the first thing a person will see is a picture of my face and another picture behind my face in which I am sitting atop a hill in Toledo, Spain with peers from high school.  From these two pieces of information there is already much that can be said.  First of all, my profile picture is actually a picture of me, not my dog or a tree.  So the client knows it’s me.  Second of all, I am not truly smiling in the picture, but I am not making a goofy face either; I am almost posing with my face in the picture.  So the client knows I put thought into how my face is presented online.  Third of all, not only am I in my residence hall room, but I am also standing up.  There is nothing inappropriate in the background and I wasn't sitting around, bored, when I decided to take a new profile picture. Now let’s look at the cover photo.  There are multiple others looking away, they seem to be posing for a camera, but I am looking at the camera directly in front of us, singling me out as “David Mena” from the group of people.  In the background there is a cityscape of Toledo.  The client might think it nice that I entertained myself to an international trip with a group of people and took interesting photos.  So far, so good. 

When a viewer of the general public scrolls down, they cannot see any of my recent posts but they can see that I updated my profile pictures and cover photos throughout the year.   To the left of this there is a brief preview of some of my friends, along with a total count of all the friends who can interact with me on Facebook.  This will also give away information since a small quantity of friends might indicate a false profile, whereas a large number of friends will indicate a true profile.  Above all of the friends’ pictures, there is an option to add me as a friend “to see what [I] share with friends,” letting the public viewer know that they obviously can’t see everything about me or the full content of my timeline.  This being said, any stranger who lacks the ability to hack will not gain any more information about me from Facebook than I will allow them to.

Conclusively, I believe that my personal page is well-kempt and presentable enough as it is to be displayed for potential clientele.  I just have to make sure it stays that way until I move on to becoming an actual professional.  Since the entire human population (not true, many animals too, especially pets) has a Facebook page, I think everyone should be cognizant of the fact that, as an author, we should all keep our audience in mind and take caution in what we want them to know.

Works Cited Page

"Facebook Profile Page." Facebook. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2014.

Visual Communication

The image I chose is a screenshot of what the public eye would see if they were to search for my Facebook page.  Social media plays a huge role in modern-day society; both the professional market and consumers alike take advantage of this fact.  For this reason, I believe that the impression of a social-media page is just as important as the impression we communicate in person.

In this piece, I am the author and, since it's a Facebook page, I am simply showing the world that I have a life and it's filled with status/picture-worthy moments that others should like (hahaha). In most circumstances, the audience of a Facebook page is a large group of friends, mostly acquaintances, who might be interested in keeping up with my personal life and vice versa.  With the settings of Facebook, however, it is possible for anyone in the general public that has a Facebook profile to become part of the audience.  Hopefully, none of these strangers are stalkers or serial killers, but rather people who are interested in knowing more about you for appropriate reasons.  For example: a client.
If a client were to consider me as their personal dietitian for hire, they would probably find out a lot of information about me as a professional on my business webpage (or something like that).  They could also have the thought of checking my Facebook page as well.  Sure, the business page may have a plethora of wonderful credentials and interesting numbers, and I might even seem like a perfect candidate in person, but social-media has the potential of tearing that all down to the ground.  In the professional fields, keeping your Facebook page in check is just as important as keeping your slacks and ties in presentable condition.Your professional credibility can go down the drain if your Facebook page has pictures from the last party you went to and a recent status about how much you hate the President of the United States.  Even if your party days are over, Facebook kept that picture someone posted of you sleeping on the floor while someone drew penises on your face five years ago.  I'm sure many people out there are in the market for a dietitian who will prescribe more alcohol and less sleep, but chances are that most people wouldn't trust such a "professional."

Since the entire human population (not true, many animals too, especially pets) has a Facebook page, I think everyone should be cognizant of the fact that, as an author, we should all keep in mind our audience and take caution in what we want them to know.

Thought Piece: Rhetorical Analysis (The Sick Rose)

Oh my, “The Sick Rose,” by William Blake.  I remember it well:  “O Rose thou art sick/ The invisible worm,/ That flies in the night/ In the howling storm:/ Has found out thy bed/ Of crimson joy:/ And his dark secret love/ Does thy life destroy.”

I remember it because I was dumbfounded that eight lines of four words each could hold a thousand more between the lines.  My high school English teacher wanted this to be the first poem we read so that we could see just how intricate the English language could be.  When asked to explain what I thought it meant, I thought perhaps it was about a relationship that was going through a rough time (the storm) since the girl (the rose) had been in an affair with someone else (the worm), therefore ruining the relationship.  To think it would be that easy...of course, thanks to my teacher, I know better now.

Apparently, what the short poem was trying to convey was the futility of love.  The rose is symbolic of love, and the worm is serpentine, therefore representing evil (in the biblical sense).  The stormy night sets the mood for chaotic evil as the worm invades the flower bed (now taking on the connotation of rape), resulting in crimson joy; pleasure tainted in shame.  Love, being a rose, is not cognizant of its corruption which depicts love as unhealthy and perverted, referencing the stupidity of human emotions.  This is only the surface.  We delved deeper behind the text to find out more.  We looked at the date, the author, and the current events of the time to create a portal through the paper and back into time, realizing that the author was very focused on changing the order of society along with mindsets of men, especially during the Industrial Revolution during which he wrote Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. “The Sick Rose” comes from this set of literature which is allegorical to the “innocent” thoughts and predispositions of human aspects like love, nature, religion, and growing up; all of it is juxtaposed by the hurtful “experience” of tainted love, merciless nature, tyrannical religion, and scarred childhoods.  Blake was basically warning his audience of the societal mindset and life; he does it all with only a few lines of very carefully chosen words.   In my opinion, rhetorical analysis can be very exciting, especially when looking at interesting literature like those of Blake’s.  

Summary Reflection

     Summarizing academic literature was not the most fun task to do.  It was, however, helpful in refining my studying skills.  By reading the article once and then having to condense the material for someone else to simply know what the gist of the article is, I was forced to retain the important information of the article.  Completing the task seemed easy at first, but one actually had to think about which parts were most important and appropriate for inclusion in a summary.  The hardest part about the assignment was leaving out my own opinion.  Being opinionated about a topic is what we as students have been told to be for the majority of our written assignments, so it’s only natural to want to rely on personal perspective to add text to the page.  Although not a problem in my case, I think the length of the article was a big factor in summarizing for many of my peers.  I spoke with some students who had shorter articles and found it difficult to “summarize” a piece that was barely longer than the required number of pages for the assignment.  Other students had very long articles so their biggest concern was finding the main talking points without having to read the entire article and without skimming so much that they miss a few points.    I’m glad we read the Rosenburg piece about effective reading before this assignment because it really helped set up how I would summarize the article.   From the article that I summarized I learned the all forms of communication are imperative to a successful career in the dietetics field.  Both verbal and nonverbal language played a role in how content the clients were with their dietitians and how much progress they made.  Despite the summary being a tad tedious, writing it was a great developmental experience.

Summary of an Article in the Dietetics Field

            In R. P. Cant and R. A. Aroni’s article, “Exploring dietitians’ verbal and nonverbal communication skills for effective dietitian-patient communication,”   a two-part study is conducted to learn about how communication plays a role in the relationship between dietitians and their clients. 

            To begin with, the authors provide a brief summary of what is already known, or at least expected, of a good customer-professional relationship in the health field.  The importance of this study is quickly brought up by contrasting the common beliefs of relationships between nurses and their patients versus dietitians and their clients.  It is very easy to understand the connection between a nurse and a patient because most people can relate to the experience and will more often than not comment on how “communication and issues of trust are linked to a perception of competence.”  Most people strongly desire such a quality in the person who is assigned to take care of them because in most cases, being communicative and dependable is what results in feeling cared for.  In the case of dietitians, however, not much information is known, at least not on the same level of public knowledge as the nurses’ situation.  The data we have on dietitians is almost always about the outcome of a client’s progress under the dietitians’ instruction.  There has very seldom been any research investigating the relationship between the client and the dietitian that doesn't have to do with simply educating the client about what the expert knows.  Due to this lack of information in the dietetics field, the first part of the investigation was launched. 

To find data about communication, researchers first had to tailor a questionnaire for dietitians to determine how THEY felt about their relationships with their clients.  A questionnaire was developed and response entries were submitted online in 2006 to have practicing dietitians evaluate themselves about certain skills, methods, strategies, and characteristics in terms of customer service.   The results of the questionnaire were processed and clustered into four domains of communication competence.  The four domains were: interpersonal, nonverbal, professional, and counseling competence.   These domains became the basis for the second part of the communication investigation in dietetics. 

From the results of the second part, the researchers concluded that the goal in effective communication is to maintain a non-hierarchical role with the client.  A good example to use as a perspective would be the ability to “empathize without judgment.”  Empathy is the key to having a healthy relationship with the client but first the dietitians have to be provided the opportunity to empathize, which is overcoming the barrier between their clients when the dietitians themselves are perceived as a total stranger.  The researchers suggest that decreasing unpredictability in the relationship would help break the image of a stranger.  To do so, dietitians were instructed to outline the sessions ahead of them and account for all types of unpredictability.  Furthermore, nonverbal communication can be of tremendous help when trying to gain a trusty communication with their client. 

When comparing the results across the different areas of the field, research shows that no notable difference was prevalent in the way that dietitians evaluated themselves.  The results also indicate that displaying positive amounts of interpersonal, nonverbal, professional, and counseling communication is a “desirable” trait that clients appreciate when their dietitians are conveying nutritional education with them.  This makes it simpler when it comes to implementing the value of communication for future dietitians, regardless of where they practice.  Therefore, the end result of the study proves that communication, both verbal and nonverbal, in the dietetics field is just as important as in any other profession.

Works Cited

Cant, R. P. and Aroni, R. A. (2008), Exploring dietitians’ verbal and nonverbal communication skills for effective dietitian–patient communication. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, 21: 502–511.