For a school assignment, I recently read a fascinating research article. The article, “When Questioning Turns to Face Threat: An Interactional Sensitivity in 911 Call-Taking,” by Sarah Tracy, can be found here. This article was both interesting and a prime example of a well-structured research article.
The article focuses on the positive and negative aspects of questioning during 911 calls. Tracy effectively illustrated why questioning is important for dispatchers, serving as an effective information-gathering tool that will provide data vital for emergency responders. Likewise, Tracy showed how questioning could be potentially life-threatening for the callers. Most importantly, Tracy clearly explained the implications of her research on the practice of emergency communications.
In many instances, 911 calls will endure periods of intense conflict and frustration. The callers are often in a moment of emotional and physical distress, which inevitably leads to huge amounts of stress. My single experience with calling 911 came when I was playing basketball and suddenly collapsed. When I woke up, one of my friends was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, trying his best to explain what was going on. I can remember him stating his name multiple times, stating where we were, and finally losing his cool. The enduring memory I have of that day was hearing his voice crack, fighting back tears, screaming, “Just get the fuck over here!” Due to fear of the unknown and the situation being completely out of our hands, my friend could not understand why he was being asked so many questions about himself while his friend was struggling to breath (Long story short, I didn’t know I had pneumonia and one of my lungs collapsed. This ended up not being such a bad thing because I can forever attribute my lack of stamina to having less lung capacity). On the other hand, the information that 911 dispatchers gathered probably had a huge impact on how I was treated when the paramedics finally arrived. They already knew my condition, what happened before I passed out, and how to get me breathing normally again.
Other than the fascinating discussion her data lead to, perhaps the best thing I got from reading this article was examining how she wrote her literature review. The literature review has always felt very “clunky” to me. What I mean is that when I write a literature review, I list the most relevant and accepted studies pertaining to my research, and try my best to answer any possible questions someone reading my results and discussion would have. What Tracy did so well, in my opinion, was explaining how her research fits in with the existing research. Instead of ignoring her research and methods of collecting data as if she hasn’t conducted her study yet, she uses the literature review to really justify what she is doing and why she is doing it. That is something I definitely can do better on as I continue to work on the final project for this class and my thesis. I tend to look at the literature review as “everything that happened before my research came along.” Instead of taking this approach, I should use the literature review to give more relevancy to my research and show why what I’m doing is important to the world.
Hayden Coombs 