Student Public Health Research Study: From Conceptualization to Analysis

• Research: Perhaps the most glaring competency I learned through this course is research. Typically, most of my research in public health is done through searching online databases and I have become quite experienced at that. In preparation for the development of our research study, we first had to research the current literature on our topic and synthesize that information. As the project went on, I developed a new set of research skills on the other side of research. Together we designed a set of questions for participants to best answer our investigative questions, then followed through on recruiting people and seeing what the data we had collected was telling us. I gained a better appreciation for resources related to research and those who conduct valuable, credible, legitimate research.

​

• Collaboration: The main quarter-long project for this class was entirely dependent on effective collaboration. Each class period, we spent the 1.5 hours working in our groups on a portion of our project through what they called "daily deliverables". This meant twice a week for ten weeks, we were practicing collaboration. Having such focused collaboration so often forced me to acknowledge how I tend to collaborate in a group. I had never acknowledged it before, but I came into this course with very little trust in collaboration. I had negative group experiences in the past which made me devalue the contributions of others. When working on this team I reflected on how past experiences may be influencing me and learned to be more understanding and open to my peers’ ideas.

​

• Idea Generation: In preparation for beginning our research study, we first had to generate a list of questions which we were interested in investigating. We established we wanted to see how substance use affects students at UW but then needed to further generate ideas on specifics. What type of substances were we interested in? What type of student effects were we interested in? Academic? Family relationships? How could we measure academic performance? Number of hours spent studying per week? Average GPA per quarter? Once establishing the investigative questions, we still needed to generate ideas throughout the quarter. How did we want people to learn about this study in a way which reaches a broad sample population? Through professors? Through fellow students? Being approached at bars?

​

• Analysis: Analysis is a skill essential to public health and this course helped significantly in strengthening that skill for me. After collecting our data, we were tasked with analyzing it for specific risk factors and associations. Our study investigated the association between prescription stimulant misuse and cumulative grade point average among undergraduate students at the University of Washington and evaluated Social Greek membership and school major as potential confounders. We also collected data regarding demographic information such as race/ethnicity, sex assigned as birth, current gender identity, and year in college to analyze.

​

• Group Development: Navigating group dynamics was essential for this course. At the beginning of the quarter we were placed in randomized groups and worked together in class for all 10 weeks. Through this experience I gained confidence in coordinating group development. I learned that real groups don't function under ideal conditions, they have to function under real world conditions. For example, six weeks into developing this project I had a relative abruptly pass away from suicide. This temporarily impacted my ability to make meaningful contributions to the team. Because we had created close working bonds, we were able to adapt as a group to such obstacles and work together to still create a quality product we were proud of.

​

• Writing: An essential part of this project was the writing components. Every step of development of this study strengthened my writing abilities for different audiences. Together we wrote a dissemination plan which was aimed at that UW undergraduate population, but we also had to write for public health centered audiences. Both the research protocol and research report were written directly for public health researchers, which required a different skillset of writing. I also completed an independent writing assignment for this project wherein I attended a research seminar and summarized and synthesized their findings. Overall, this course and its associated assignments helped me to gain writing skills specifically around addressing differing audiences in writing.

​

• Helping Others: Because of the strong group development my team had, helping others was another skill I strengthened in this course. When working together in class, it wasn't uncommon for someone to be late or miss a day. To make up for that I helped others with their portion of work or have guidance for how their work should be done. For example, there was an in issue with lost observations when trying to clean our data. I volunteered to take on the task of re-cleaning the data on my own time because I knew it was one of my strengths and I could get it done quickly so the rest of our team could move forward.