How I Undertook the Conduct of Research Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

How I Undertook the Conduct of Research - Essay Example Where did you start with your research? b. How and why did you approach the various aspects of your work? c. How, why and where you found things? d. Why were some things useful, and why were others not? Where did you start your research? The research done in order to write the research paper was conducted with a view to analyse existing legal rules and jurisprudence on the law on assisted dying. I started my research by first reflecting and asking myself what I wanted to find out and how I wanted to proceed. Did I have a specific opinion on whether or not the law should be reformed and then find justification for such an opinion, or did I want my own opinions to be shaped by the data that I would come across in the course of my own research? The first thing I did was to acknowledge that I had a specific and definite opinion on the issue of assisted dying and it was that I believed the law was in great need of reformHowever, I also wanted to ensure that I started as objectively as pos sible, and thus it was important for me to get an accurate definition of assisted suicide. For this, I wanted not grey literature or advocacy literature, but something scientific and credible. Thus I relied on a book entitled â€Å"Medical Law and Ethics†. I found that the definition of euthanasia, or assisted dying is, the act of consciously assisting someone’s death in order to relieve that person of suffering as a result of terminal illness1. I also found that this can be broken down into even more classifications, such as passive and active, as well as voluntary and involuntary. After knowing what the definition of euthanasia, I then focused on finding what the law presently states on the subject matter. For this, it was of course helpful to not only look at the appropriate statutes and criminal code, but also to look at what eminent jurists were saying on the subject matter. It quickly became clear in the course of my research that while neighbouring countries lik e The Netherlands and Belgium – both in close proximity to the United Kingdom in more ways than geography -- have allowed euthanasia and in fact, many citizens of the UK and around the world have made the tip to these two countries to have assisted suicide performed on them, it is still illegal in our jurisdiction. How and why did you approach the various aspects of your work? Because I did not want to just focus on a general reform call, I wanted to be specific to a particular bill. To this end, I focused on the Assisted Suicide bill by Lord Joffe, which was priorly defeated in the House of Lords. As I stated in my reform paper, the bill, if enacted into law, would allow terminally ill patients to seek drugs from their doctors that would end their lives. The benefits of the act, if passed, will only be for those who have been medically diagnosed to live for six months, who are suffering from unbearable pain, and who are psychologically of sound mind and not depressed. I chos e this particular reform bill because it is by and large the most debated upon and controversial bill with respect to euthanasia and the debates on the merits of this bill have not abated even after its defeat. This research primarily relied on doctrinal methods. Paul Chynoweth defines the Doctrinal Legal Research as follows: