A、Comparing the medical situations in a couple of countries. B、Finding out how the British think of general practitioners. C、Foc

[16]I have been doing some research into what people in Britain think of doctors, the ones who work in general practice—the first call for medical care—and comparing this with the situation in a couple of other countries. I want to talk about the rationale behind what I decided to do.
    Now I had to set up my program of research in three different countries so I approached postgraduates in my field in overseas departments, contacting them by email, to organize things for me at their end. I thought I would have trouble recruiting help but in fact everyone was very willing and sometimes their tutors got involved too.
    I had to give my helpers clear instructions about what kind of sample population I wanted them to use. I decided that people under 18 should be excluded because most of them are students or looking for their first job, and also I decided at this stage just to focus on men who were in employment, and set up something for people who didn’t have jobs and for employed women later on as a separate investigation.
    I specifically wanted to do a questionnaire, and interviews with a focus group. With the questionnaire, rather than limiting it one specific point, I wanted to include as much variety as possible. I know questionnaires are a very controlled way to do things but I thought I could do taped interviews later on to compensate the effects of this. And the focus group may also prove useful in future, by targeting subjects I can easily return to, as the participants tend to be more involved.
    So I’m just comparing the results now. At the moment it looks as if, in the UK, despite the fact that newspapers continually report that people are unhappy with medical care, in fact it is mainly the third level of care, which takes place in hospitals, that they are worried about Government reforms have been proposed at all levels and although their success is not guaranteed, long-term hospital care is in fact probably less of an issue than the media would have us believe. However, I’ve still got quite a bit of data to look at.
    Certainly I will need to do more far-reaching research than I had anticipated in order to establish if people want extra medical staff invested in the community, or if they want care to return to fewer, but larger, key medical units. The solution may well be something that can be easily implemented by those responsible in local government, with central government support of course.
16. What is the theme of the speaker’s research?
17. What are people in the UK mainly worried about regarding medical care?
18. Why does the speaker need to do more research?