I haven't thought much about my position paper as of yet however it has been constantly in the back of my mind, knocking on the door like Sheldon knocking on Penny's door on The Big Bang Theory, waiting to come in and be the centre of attention.
Week two of the semester suggests I should be searching for information for my topic, which is the New Zealand government adopting a policy of subsiding healthy food by taxing unhealthy food. This topic caught my eye immediately and I am very interested to delve deep into this controversial topic. Currently I am completing a nutrition course for my bachelor which involves devising a healthy eating plan incorporating all main food groups while staying away from unhealthy food. The biggest challenge will be devising a food plan that is also suitable on a student budget, hence why I find my position paper topic very interesting.
While I have already made up my mind as to where I sit with this debate, I have tried to put my personal thoughts aside and look at the topic from all angles. The way I thought best to do this was to find and read up on other opinion pieces and articles from the likes of www.stuff.co.nz and www.radionz.co.nz and general private communication I have been able to find on facebook in certain groups, however I wont be using the private communications as a part of my research because I have been using them only as a way to broaden my mind on the topic.
I am finding it a struggle to find any scientific articles around not subsidizing healthy food so I am expecting my position paper to be heavily referenced on the 'yes, subsidize healthy food' and there to be very little credentials for 'no, dont subsidize healthy food'.
Finding scholarly, peer-reviewed articles hasn't proven to be as hard of a task as I first expected. I was quite daunted by the idea of finding all of the information with little to no direction. I have found that Google Scholar is my best friend however most if not all of the articles are off-shore, meaning I have had great difficulty finding New Zealand related articles using this method.
Although I haven't found much difficulty in finding broad information, I am discovering a challenge in how I search for more relevant information. As days go by and I frequently search for information, I expect to become somewhat of a student expert when it comes to finding relevant information based on my search criteria.
From here on out, I will be working on my search criteria, keeping that open mind that I mentioned earlier and setting myself a timeline of what I need to do to with my paper and when it needs to be completed by.
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