3a. Tell the story of your research. What turns did it take?

What were your missed

opportunities and what were your unexpected scores?
I started out my research as does pretty much anyone else in the modern day, by
searching the internet and becoming immediately overwhelmed. Conducting a
search for elderly abuse yields 5,820,000 results. So the next step was to refine my
search, I could go in many directions, in the forms of types of abuse, perpetrators,
and locations where abuse typically takes place. Again this yielded way too many
results, totaling 27,600,000. Needless to say the information was out there, more
than I could read in a lifetime.
The other issue with my internet search, especially when it came to finding a source
to write my profile essay, was that the biggest lifetime advocates for the fate
against elderly abuse had passed away. Those that had become the biggest
champions of the cause had passed away from old age themselves. This is not to
say there are not those continuing the battle among the living, more I had difficulty
finding more of them. This accounts for my missed opportunities at this point in my
research.
It was not till I conducted my research in the SLCC Library Database that I got my
unexpected score. I found an article by Michael J. Berens written for the Seattle
Times titled Selling Out Seniors published in the IRE Journal in the Spring of 2011.
This was not necessarily the goldmine that I had hoped for, but was the springboard
to other investigative writing the author had done related to elderly abuse. One of
the biggest issue surrounding abuse of the elderly is that it is hard to find
quantifiable data related to the issue. Much of the abuse goes unreported for
various reasons. Mr. Beren did exhaustive research into issues related to abuses
related to in home care for seniors and the rampant abuses of the system in
Washington state. So Mr. Berens became my focus for a personal profile that I can
tie to my social justice issue.
More to follow I am sure..