Guest blog, Top tips

Blog – Why to say YES to podcasts

New Blog from Yvette Vermeer

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When I got the opportunity to participate in a podcast from dementia researcher my first response was YES! However, why would a podcast be beneficial to my research or even my primary audience?

Well the answer is simple. Podcasts are easy, fun, personal and on-demand.

Easy is an understatement. Dementia researcher arranges and organises the podcasts. This meant that I could join a topic with different panel members or recommend a certain topic with other speakers. For example, I was having a conversation with another early stage researcher about some of the difficulties we experienced when conducting interviews and focus groups with carers and people living with dementia .We felt that sometimes we were not fully prepared for qualitative research and the ethical procedure.  In addition, we wanted others to learn from our experiences and to further improve the involvement of people living with dementia into research. Luckily, the team behind the podcasts were all hands on deck and together we made a great podcast.

There are two ways of approaching a podcast. You can either send in a set of questions you wish to discuss or you trust the process and see what happens. The latter is what actually makes it fun. You never know what to expect and what another panel member is going to say. This also made it personal because you are actually having a conversation with one or more panel members about research.

Personal podcast make a great opportunity to build new partnerships, share ideas and best practice and raise awareness of your work. For example, when I contributed to a podcast about involving people living with dementia in research, I had the opportunity to speak with someone from an ethics committee. It was beneficial to have a chance to ask questions, tell my side of the story and learn from others.

Another thing I like about the dementia researcher podcasts is that they are on demand. Whilst the dementia researcher network focuses on early career researchers their podcasts are posted on open platforms such as SoundCloud. Hereby, anyone who is interested can decide what they want to hear, when they want to hear it and comment as much as they like. I have a background in marketing and know that at the end of the day: it is essential that we researchers get our message heard and used. So why not do a podcast?

Dementia Researcher Comment

If you would like to come to the studio and record a podcast about your research, drop us an email at dementiaresearcher@nihr.ac.uk we also regularly call for participants to join podcasts talking to other topics of interest to dementia researchers you can follow us on twitter with @dem_researcher. We will next be recording on the 2nd April 2019, drop us a line if you would like to join us – we have one slot to join a panel discussing ‘Transition to leadership’ and another for a team / group to come and talk about their research.


Author

Yvette Vermeer is an early stage researcher at the European network INDUCT and a Marie Curie Fellow at University College London. Yvette researches surveillance technologies in use with people with dementia and investigates the assumptions lying behind such products. She also blogs about the reality behind doing dementia research on https://vermeeresearchingdementia.wordpress.com/

You can follow Yvette on Twitter         

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Yvette Vermeer

I am an early stage researcher at the European network INDUCT and a Marie Curie Fellow at University College London. I research surveillance technologies in use with people with dementia and investigates the assumptions lying behind such products. She also blogs about the reality behind doing dementia research.

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