Planned sources of additional data for this blog

Currently I am working on finding more information for this blog. Some of the planned resources include:
1. The first floor of the BYU Harold B. Lee Library in the Social Science section where the Maya Guatemala books are.
2. A nurse in Momostenango, Guatemala that could give me so more perspective and information.
3. Professor Christianson, who teaches at BYU.
4. Adriana Smith, a BYU alumnus who knows about Antigua, Guatemala.
5. Choice Humanitarian, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah that works directly with certain Maya groups and is planning on building a hospital in Guatemala.
6. More dialogue with Doug Wendt, who has been to Guatemala multiple times.
Etc.

My quest to find Guatemalan historical information

For my Excel assignment, I really struggled to find great measurable statistics for infant mortality or other health related information in censuses and in other primary records. Eventually I found a great study comparing infant mortality rates from the 1940s and the 1980s. Guatemala's rate was also listed in comparison to a handful of other nations. The link is http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/529000. Click the pdf version at the top, and scroll down to page 55. Only one person can view this article at a time. I hope you find this interesting.
--Travis

Advice from Sister Crandell about the Excel/Access Assignments

For all those in Sister Crandell's class and for personal reference, I wanted to include her advice to me yesterday as to how to go about gathering statistical data. My topic requires extra research, but fortunately Sister Crandell and I found provincial records in Guatemala in the 1800's, so I will for the purposes of this assignment look at age as a determinant of health. I am going to compare rural cities adjoining each other to have a good sample to work from, which requires a map. Also, I will put additional demographic information such as occupation, marriage, and location (city) into access so I can query across these different demographic factors.

I hope this helps those struggling with these assignments. Go talk to her like I did; she was very helpful.

Check out my new podcast!

I added this podcast to my blog. It will help anyone understand how to research a topic. The material was taken from an interview with my aunt, Suzie Roper, who teaches a Research Methods class at BYU Provo. Enjoy!