Outreach

Contents

1. Reading Scholars
   - Presentation
   - Summer Residential
   
   
2. St. Joseph’s College
   - Presentation
   
   
3. Bulmershe School: Gold Standard Dataset
   - Presentation
   
   
4. Psychology Taster Session
   - Presentation
   
   

Reading Scholars

The University of Reading seeks to increase the transition of high-achieving A-level students, from low income families, to university education.
I used the opportunity of giving talks to the 2021/22 cohort of scholars to gain data for the online task and the ESM study.

- 31st March 2022: Presentation.

I gave an hour-long on-campus presentation, outlining the two studies that I am running, the aims of the NRG lab and how the students (~30) could get involved.

Regarding the lattermost point, I asked them to fill out an online survey which collected self-reported clinical data, containing the scales: BDI, MFQ, ASA, SHAPS, TEPS and STAI-trait anxiety scale. These were collected prior to the presentation, because the plan was to get them to do the task during the 2-hour evening session.
However, I cancelled it because Prof. McCabe’s previous experience showed that participants start talking to each other a few trials into the task. Therefore, I sent links to the task and unique identifying numbers to the scholars via email, after the presentation, so they may complete it in their own time.

TL;DR: Bad idea to allow participants to do the task in their own time. A total of 23 scholars had completed the online survey, whereas just 9 of them did the task. A task-completion rate of less than 1 in 3 makes this method of data collection cumbersome and pointless - the worst of both worlds. So, it should be used as the last resort.

- 5th-7th July 2022: Summer Residential.

This residential included the scholars returning to the campus and getting the “undergraduate experience”. These were students interested in psychology and so I conducted the central activity of their residential: poster design and presentation.
The data for the posters was from the online task which the scholars completed on their first session with me (5th July). This would give the scholars an experience of being both researchers and participants. From this, I had made clear that as the researcher, their utmost concern is data quality, which means they must do the task with diligence as participants. This, however, did not work…

I had hoped to gain 30(!) participants’ data, which would be the biggest one-time collection I would have had! However, they were sitting next to each other while completing the task and starting talking to each other - a warning that Prof. McCabe had given me before. Nonetheless, I used their data for the purposes of the posters. Further analyses will determine if the data is worth using; I need to find a GOLD STANDARD cohort to compare them against.

TL;DR: Getting students to do the task while sitting next to each other will give you poor quality data. The residential was fun, regardless.

St. Joseph’s College

- 30th June 2022: Presentation.

Bulmershe School

- 13th July 2022: Presentation.

University Psychology Taster Session

- 28th July 2022: Presentation.