SDL Blog posts from lab members old and new
5th December, 2023
My Experience as an Undergraduate Research Assistant – Lizete Murniece
For over a year now, I have been working alongside Dr. Beatrice Hayes to create and validate a scale measuring student’s online self-disclosure on educational platforms. Ultimately, we are creating a scale to measure how much information students are willing to disclose to students and staff on platforms such as Moodle forums and e-mails. This scale can then be utilised in future experiments to see if self-disclosure might relate with mental wellbeing or academic achievement. We have recently submitted our paper and are now waiting to hear back from the reviewers!
My main tasks as a research assistant involved; creating a questionnaire on Qualtrics, encouraging students to complete the questionnaire, and assisting with the writing up the study manuscript. There were also several more opportunities presented to me throughout this experience. Dr. Beatrice Hayes would often invite me to the Social Development Lab meetings and most recently the Psychology Postgraduate Conference where I was able to present and discuss our study with other students and members of staff. Through these experiences, I had the chance to enhance my presentation and design skills by creating posters and presentations for these events.
The most challenging task I encountered as a research assistant was participant recruitment. As we were aiming to recruit around 150 participants, we had to adopt many different recruitment techniques, for example, social media posts, posters placed around campus, and word of mouth to achieve this goal. However, after a dozen social media posts and a lot of patience, Dr. Beatrice Hayes and I were able to reach our desired participant count. Although this was a challenge, I was able to develop participant recruitment skills which I could utilise throughout my second-year research projects and will now put to use for my final year project.
Although I did not conduct the analysis, Dr. Beatrice Hayes guided me through the analysis process by explaining unknown terms and methods I had not yet learnt about. The analysis was also conducted on R software which I was unfamiliar with. However, to help increase my knowledge of the analysis process, Dr. Beatrice Hayes provided me with websites where I could practise using the R software. As I am now in my third year, there is a possibility I could use the R software for analysing findings for my own study and thus, I feel more prepared to conduct these analyses.
Overall, I am immensely grateful for this experience and if you have the chance to apply to a research assistant role, I highly recommend it. Although it had its challenges, my experience as a research assistant has been invaluable. Not only have I been able to develop new skills but through conducting a real psychological experiment and connecting to other people with similar interests to me, it has increased my interest in research and led me to consider pursuing a career in this sector. I would like to thank Dr. Beatrice Hayes for providing me with this opportunity, always supporting me and helping me grow as a researcher.
24th October, 2023
Expanding Horizons; Being a Research Assistant at Royal Holloway – Riley Caldwell
Over the last five months, I have had the pleasure of planning and running a couple of focus groups under Dr. Beatrice Hayes, THESIS and the Social Development Lab. We are still mid-study with another focus group and analysis ahead but thus far the experience has opened my understanding of qualitative data studies and the reality thereof.
Our research has been building upon Dr. Hayes previous research of online self-disclosure effects on educational platforms. As a natural progression of her previous work, we have collected groups of students from postgraduate and undergraduate years of study and discussed their thoughts about sharing in different mediums within the online education setting.
My experience with research prior to this opportunity was largely quantitative and primarily took place online and/or with a short questionnaire in person. The process of developing a comprehensive demographics sheet, learning about and adapting conversational flowcharts to follow throughout the focus group have been excellent tool-building experiences. However, the greatest challenge and learning experience has been organising and collecting participants for these groups. I have newfound respect for qualitative research and the effort needed to find participants at sub-optimal times of year (i.e., during the summer months when students are largely away from campus). The autonomy to organise these groups has allowed me to see the challenges of recruiting through online platforms and scheduling with interested participants. After using Reddit, Twitter, WhatsApp and other social media sources as well as campus posters, our first groups were successfully assembled. It has also shown me the joys of successfully collecting the groups and sitting down to have that all-important discussion.
Running the focus groups themselves and transcribing them by hand have been the best and most compelling components. I have really enjoyed getting to chat with people from different educational groups and hearing about what their experiences were throughout their education thus far. While I could have used transcription software, I felt that thoroughly going through and transcribing the conversations by hand really gave me the chance to dig into the data. As I prepare to conduct thematic analysis on the focus groups conducted to date, I find myself excited to come back to the themes I felt I was hearing while transcribing.
Being a research assistant for Dr. Hayes has been an incredible experience that I hope to continue building upon. I would highly recommend being a Research Assistant as an undergraduate and encourage students to consider the depth of understanding that you’re able to gain from going beyond the in-class projects.
29th May, 2023
My experience at Royal Holloway Science Festival 2023 – Zain Khan
Royal Holloway University organized a science festival in May 2023, for public engagement. It is a day of interactive talks and displays for people passionate about science from astonished researchers. In this blog, I will reflect on my experience and try to give an insight into the festival.
Prof. Dawn Watling, Gemma Rides, Abigail Keizner and I attended Royal Holloway Science Festival representing the social development lab. Science festival is a day-long program where scientific discoveries are displayed in an interactive way for the public. The people are given hands-on experience in activities and experiments. Royal Holloway has been organizing the festival for the last 25 years and it’s quite famous among the local community. This was my first experience of attending the science festival, and I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing a few experiments myself like rubber hand and visual illusion.
I presented an emotion recognition task titled ”Recognising emotions in faces-does conflicting information impact emotion-processing’’. However, I was quite nervous before the day, as it was my first public engagement event at the university. We had a lot of participants who were excited to take part in this task and were amazed to learn how important emotion recognition is in our daily lives. The most interesting aspect was the realisation that presenting science in a relatable and accessible manner, empowers children, showing them that they too can understand and engage with scientific ideas. These festivals demonstrate that scientific concepts are applicable to everyday life and foster a sense of confidence and encouragement among the local community. The science festival also provided us with a networking opportunity with researchers from various departments across the university.
Overall, I enjoyed talking to children and parent
s from diverse backgrounds. I would highly encourage parents and teachers to bring children of all ages to the next science festival event.
1st December, 2022
My experience at the BPS Developmental Conference 2022 – Gemma Rides
In September 2022, Prof. Dawn Watling, Dr Beatrice Hayes and I, attended the BPS Developmental conference held at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Sheffield. In this blog post, I will reflect on my first in-person conference experience and hopefully give you some insight on what you can expect at a BPS Dev conference
I was awarded a BPS Developmental Section Postgraduate Bursary to cover conference registration fees. As part of this bursary, the recipients were asked to act as a steward for some presentations. This involved assisting the chair with the smooth running of the sessions, signposting attendees to the various conference rooms within the venue, working with the chair to ensure that all the speakers were present, and to seek onsite technical support when needed. Some stewards also Tweeted about the talks they attended. I found that stewarding was a great opportunity, as I was able to attend the sessions I was interested in, whilst fulfilling my volunteering role.
The conference ran over three days, and had excellent presentations, posters and keynote talks by UK and international developmental researchers. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about the research that is currently being conducted in developmental psychology and the implications this might have for policy and future research. I was particularly interested in the various methodologies used by others, which encouraged me to reflect on how I could implement this in my own research.
On day two of the conference, I presented the findings from my first PhD study in a 5-minute flash talk titled “Adolescents’ perceptions of their interactions on social media: A qualitative study”. Although I was nervous beforehand, the talk was well received by the audience and was followed up by some interesting questions and enthusiasm about the future studies I have planned.
The conference schedule provided lots of opportunities for networking with other researchers, including coffee (and cake) sessions, lunches, and the conference dinner. As this was my first in-person conference, I was initially apprehensive about networking as I was not sure what to expect. However, I was quickly put at ease as it was a very friendly, approachable, and supportive environment, and I really enjoyed forming connections to others in my area and talking ‘all things research’.
Overall, I had an enjoyable and exciting experience at the BPS Developmental conference and would highly recommend others to attend in the future. Thank you to BPS for organising the event, and I look forward to seeing everyone again next year!
Twitter: @Gemma_Rides
23rd September, 2022
Reflecting on my experience of being a Psychology Research Assistant – Abigail Keizner
Over this recent summer period I have been working as a Research Assistant (RA) for the Social Development Lab here at Royal Holloway. The research that I assisted with focused on developing an Online Self-Presentation Scale, which consists of the motivations behind online self-presentation, specifically on social media. Throughout the research process I was led by Professor Dawn Watling and Dr Beatrice Hayes, who guided me through each necessary stage, whilst also allowing me to develop an ability to work independently. Through gaining this position, I have developed a greater interest and knowledge of the field of Cyber Psychology, and confidence in my ability to learn how to use new software.
Firstly, since the research I was involved in was qualitative, I was guided through the stages of how to carry out a thematic analysis by Professor Dawn Watling and Dr Beatrice Hayes. Essentially, this is where patterns and themes are analysed across the data set. I was initially given files of interview transcripts and recordings by Professor Dawn Watling, since the interview process had already taken place before I started the position. Additionally, since these transcripts were created using an automated service, they needed to be checked for errors. Through using a software called Temi, I was able to listen to the interviews whilst following the provided transcripts. As a result, by doing this I was able to correct any errors or mistakes in the data. This was the part of the research process that I least enjoyed, as it was quite repetitive listening to the same questions being repeated for each participant. Nevertheless, doing this was important part of the research process, and it was a valuable experience to be able to have hands on experience, and full access to the data at hand.
Next, I was given training by Dr Beatrice Hayes on how to use a software called NVivo. This is a software that I was previously unfamiliar with, but thanks to the great support and guidance given, I was able to pick up how to use it very quickly. NVivo allows you to easily carry out a thematic analysis through uploading documents such as transcripts, making notes of codes in the dataset; gradually grouping these into broader themes. At each stage of the thematic analysis, I met with Professor Dawn Watling and Dr Beatrice Hayes to discuss what I had done and receive useful feedback, which helped and reassured me that I was on the right track with my analysis. In accordance with the order of carrying out a thematic analysis, I firstly familiarised myself with the data and generated initial codes. After doing this, I searched for the broader themes and reviewed them. Finally, I gave the themes names and defined them. Based on my analysis of the data, I found four key themes that are motivations of online self-presentation: Maintaining an image, Attention, Communication, and Displaying and Engaging with Interests.
To conclude, I thoroughly enjoyed my time working as an RA within the Social Development Lab, and it has undoubtedly equipped me with countless valuable skills for a future career within the field. I am highly grateful to Professor Dawn Watling and Dr Beatrice Hayes for all the support they gave me throughout the process, and for giving me this opportunity and experience.
14th July, 2022
Completing my final year project with Dr Beatrice Hayes – Lottie Netherwood
For my final year project, I was lucky enough to be a part of investigating the use of emojis and gifs in higher education. I had the opportunity to explore the vast research area in order to aid my understanding. The freedom that came with this process was somewhat overwhelming due to amount of literature to choose from however, this was beneficial to the research process as I was able to become well informed and shape my hypotheses. I was particularly interested the different ways in which education can be complimented by ‘social media typical’ communication.
I was grateful to be working within a group who were happy to discuss ideas and share the workload of various tasks to compose surveys and create stimuli efficiently. I was able to develop a balance between the project tasks, my own academic activities as well as social activities. This is definitely a skill I am happy to have fostered as I find myself juggling a multitude of tasks and commitments. The group work aspect also allowed me to learn from others approaches and consider different points of view. Although, when it came to individual aspects of the project, I still felt a sense of support within the group which helped motivate me through the tougher tasks.
I learnt to develop my analysis skills; this was always a challenging aspect of my degree, but I was given guidance to feel confident while carrying out a hierarchical regression. I became increasingly confident using SPSS, learning from mistakes and re-running analysis, I built resilience though this process and I am so happy that I persevered to help develop my analysis skills.
Despite not having any significant findings I still feel as though I have participated in a research project that is very relevant at this time. As we currently live in a world where we are utilising online learning more and more as a result of Corona Virus pandemic, the topic has plenty of scope for further investigation. Consequently, I am excited to continue to work on the project and hope to reach a more diverse group of participants. I am excited to see what will come of the further steps of the project and the results that these steps may produce. Overall I have really loved the experience of working on a project that feels so relevant and I am very grateful to have been able to further develop my skill set.
28th June, 2022
My experience as an Undergraduate Research Assistant – Sania Fatima
Working on a Research Assistance (RA) position taught me the importance of the connection between independent and collaborative learning in research. During my RA position with Dr Beatrice Hayes, I was initially asked to read articles regarding online learning, use of gifs and emojis in digital spaces, perception of gifs and emojis and biases in frequency and use of gifs and emojis among different age groups. This set a foundation for which types of questions were unanswered and were required to be incorporated in our study. Although I had no prior experience in this research area or designing qualitative research, working with Dr Beatrice Hayes’ guidance taught me how to combine large pieces of research in a concise manner used for semi-structured interview. One key thing that stood out to me during this period is the freedom I was given to refine the research to my interest areas. If I had suggested an idea that could benefit the design process of the study, it was positively taken and often encouraged. I was equipped with a flowchart method for the semi-structured interview which enabled me to navigate how to stay on topic with the conversation. Next, I was instructed to conduct the interviews with the set questions. I had to record each interview on a portable device and upload it to shared Dropbox. With each interview, I identified patterns in themes that were discussed as well as becoming more resilient in conversing with diverse group of interviewees. However, I had to be cautious to not to let previous identified themes/ responses lead me to presume a similar answer from new interviewee- a rather challenging skill as I often had to stop myself from probing participants to answer in a certain direction.
Identifying themes during the interview process had some benefits, easing me into the next step: thematic analysis. This process entailed a vital initial step, transcription of the interview. Despite its importance, this was my least favourite task as it very quickly became repetitive to relisten to interviews and note down the exact dialogue! A positive and perhaps comical conclusion I drew upon after finishing the transcription, was the importance of avoiding filler words such as ‘umm’ and ‘uh’. This was an important learning process for me. The thematic analysis was conducted on an analysis software called NVivo. This was the last step to the RA position and a certainly rewarding one. I hadn’t use NVivo prior to this position but the way I was taught helped embed the basic functions very quickly. I was also given the opportunity to lead a small team of voluntary RAs to assist me in this step, which provided me with excellent leadership skills.
Drawing upon what I had been taught in my Psychology degree, this RA experience was definitely a step forward and made me confident in my decision to take up lots more research opportunities and diversify my skill set.