Using Your Research Experiences as Data to Explore Your Interests
Hello FUNdeclared students! I am Norik, a 4th year Psychology major, with minors in Behavioral Neuroscience, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This semester I am a teaching assistant and coordinator for the Explore Program, so you have likely seen me at many of the exploratory events!
I have participated in 3 research experiences so far at Northeastern, including on co-op, directed study, and off-campus research. I want to start with a disclaimer that you don’t need to love research or see it as a career option to start being involved. In fact, I think it can be particularly difficult for undeclared students to get involved in research, considering you may not know yet what subjects interest you enough to delve more into. Before I started getting involved in research, I didn’t think I would find it worthwhile – and I have definitely had research experiences I did not enjoy as much. However, I think that at this part of your academic life gaining research experience can be a great tool to further explore your academic interests! Additionally, it will help you build on valuable skills that can transfer to other work and life contexts, such as critical thinking, team work, and public speaking.
My on-campus research experience was a directed study at the Conceptual Organization, Reasoning, and Education (CORE) Lab. A directed study gives you the opportunity to participate in research in an active lab on campus for a semester for course credit – for psychology majors a directed study can cover one of two lab requirements. I appreciated getting this opportunity over a typical lab course, because I was immersed in an actual lab and got to experience what the process of research looks like, instead of learning about it in a classroom setting. At CORE, I got to help out with a couple of different studies looking at how people categorize various concepts (e.g. does everyone experience anger or fear in the same way?), by looking at recent media articles, conducting literature reviews, and running a few participants.
On my first co-op, I experienced a very different kind of research, as a clinical research assistant at the Behavioral Health Partial (BHP) Program at McLean Hospital. During my co-op, my typical day to day revolved around independently running my supervisor’s study, which was looking at cognitive flexibility (the ability to disengage and switch your attention to different concepts) as it relates to treatment outcomes (how patients respond to treatment). This included recruiting participants from the patient population at the program, consenting them, administering the behavioral tasks and self-report questionnaires, and managing the study database. I also competed tasks to support other ongoing research projects, and got to observe a lot of clinical work (including diagnostic interviews and group therapy sessions). I really enjoyed the integration of research work and clinical exposure in my first co-op, and it made me feel like what I was doing, although it was research, was impactful and worthwhile for the patients.
As I became more involved in the program and felt more confident about my position, I decided to complete an independent research project. I talked with my supervisor about my interest in evaluating treatment outcomes for the LGBTQ patients in the program, and I started drafting an abstract and looking at data with her. I ended up submitting my abstract for a national conference, where I presented my poster later that year. My supervisor thought that our findings were really interesting, and suggested we write the project up as a paper – it is currently in press in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology! Contributing to research on such a scale and getting to discuss my project with professionals in the field solidified my interest in going into the mental health field, and sparked my interest specifically in clinical research. Knowing that I wanted to do more on this topic, I reached out to a professor at UMass Boston, whose work centers physical and mental health issues in LGBTQ and HIV-positive or at-high-risk populations, and I’m currently contributing to one of his ongoing projects.
Are you interested in pursuing research?
- Participate in a research study on campus to see what it’s like
- Do some research: look up different labs on campus (you can often find a list on the websites for different majors), talk to faculty advisors about research opportunities in their majors, search for labs in the area
- Reach out to faculty (or their graduate students) to discuss your interest in being involved in their research programs
- Stay reflective throughout your experience! Use your experiences as data to examine what your interests are!
By: Norik Kirakosian