Research Journal Entry 5- University 106

The reference resource that I decided upon was under the “Acronyms & Abbreviations”. Once I navigated to that page, I went on to the page where there were three acronym searching sites. They were Abbreviations and Acronyms of the U.S. Government, All that JAS (Journal Abbreviation Sources) and Acronym Finder. I decided to focus on the Acronym Finder. The type of information on this site is a resource that helps to find the definitions of over 750,000 acronyms, abbreviations or initialism. It also has the search option to find over 850,000 US and Canadian postal codes. Once you input an acronym you need defined, it pulls up all the possible results. There is also an option to filter the returned results into categories like; Information Technology, Military & Government, Science & Medicine, Organizations & School Etc, Business & Finance, Slang, Chat & Pop Culture or all definitions. The search tool also has the option to input a word, and then it will give a list of abbreviations. The results are all links that upon selecting them, it defines the word. Along the left side of the results has a ranking system. At the top of the page, where you input the word or acronym, there is an option to select “abbreviation”, “word in meaning” or “location”.

I used a couple of different strategies to learn more about some breast cancer acronyms. In some of my research I kept seeing a particular acronym- DCIS. I had looked it up at one point but it didn’t give the definition, it only defined the acronym. Another strategy was to input the general term of “breast cancer”. When I saw some of the acronyms it jogged my memory and I searched more terms I had come across, that I had found early in my research. Many of the acronyms looked familiar but searching it helped me to find, and define some of the terms I was unsure of. I believe that it will help to enhance my research projects.

This search resource will be helpful in many ways. Using this resource in my ethnography will give my paper a rich and authoritative stance. Know and utilizing the discourse within my community really helped me when I interviewed the breast cancer survivors. I was able to focus on what they were discussing during their support groups rather than wondering what in the world they were talking about. I could fully understand their acronym, even when they were using acronyms. There are so many acronyms in medical terminology, and to know the abbreviations or acronyms mean that I can dig deep into the community.

The entire reference resource page contains so much information! I’m excited to use this in upcoming projects in other classes.