One More Day...

Okay, tomorrow is the day my lab report is due! I worked on my report some on Friday and today will be spent finishing up my lab and creating some graphs to use in my paper as well as the presentation I have to give on Wednesday. I can't believe Interim is almost over and I have just two days before it's all over! I've got to get back to work for now...

Reagan

Writing, Writing, Writing

Yesterday has no post, seeing as I have been writing my results and discussion for my lab report/paper, which is also what today has been dedicated to doing. Because this project is only over for the time being, I'm having a little bit of trouble writing everything and trying to pick and choose what should be included for my final interim paper. I'm having trouble because I feel like I clearly cannot tell the entire story in this experiment just yet, and especially not in this paper. However, I'm doing my best to tell as much as I can in the clearest way possible. This will allow others to understand the project from a scientific perspective, and it will also help me remember what I've been doing in my experiment up to this point as this interim winds down. So for the time being, I'm still just writing! Wish me luck...

Reagan

Data Day

Up to this point, all of the data analysis I have been doing had been fairly basic and prelimary. Today I finally transformed some of the data and collapsed it even further and ran tests on the overall accuracy of the participants in the study! It was a lot more complex than I had imagined, but now that I have the hang of things, the data analysis and ANOVAs that I am running are going alot more quickly. Again, I'm sorry for the short blog post, but I've literally been doing data analysis and fixing the data files to make sure that everything is in the right order ALL DAY LONG. We had a minor hiccup while pasting data into the new SPSS file, because it had accidentally been entered into the original excel file in the reverse order, so that had to be fixed. In addition, there were a few variables that didn't exist for certain accuracies so those had to be checked and deleted out. So today was definitely data day! I'm going to do some more work writing today though as well, because I officially have less than a week until my final interim paper (lab report basically) is due, so I really need to get rolling!

Reagan

The Downhill Slide

Now that data collection is officially finished, all of my day was spent going back through the articles I’ve been reading in order to analyze the “Methods” section of each article. I read numerous articles but focused on the Methods section to help me write my own Methods section for my paper, and eventually the journal article for this study. With the exception of a few questions, I’ve finished my Methods section, which is super exciting! I also finished most of the raw data input and some basic analysis yesterday after all of the subjects were finished. Basically, it’s all down hill from here! Over this week, I will be writing and getting my power point presentation ready.

Wish me luck,

Reagan

Why, yes, it is Saturday...

I am indeed writing this blog post on a Saturday at 5 pm. Why, you may ask? Because I am currently running my final test subject and doing the initial data analyses for the data group! YAYYY! I'm not necessarily excited to be doing work on a Saturday, but you have to do what you have to do. Therefore, I'm here finishing up work so that I can stay ahead on my workload before my rapidly- approaching deadline sneaks up on me. Yesterday was fairly uneventful other than running one subject, typing up the coding for the data in Excel and SPSS, and reading more journal articles to help me begin writing my methods section for the paper, which I will begin writing today and tomorrow. And as I stated earlier, I'm simply running my final two subjects today and finishing up data analysis, in addition to reading of course!

Even on a Saturday, everything is business as usual...

Reagan

My Last Victim

Yes, it's true. Today I found the final subject, or rather victim, for my research project! By the end of this week I will officially be done testing (unless the data tells me I need more people) and will begin an entirely new level of data analysis, in addition to the things I have already been doing in SPSS and Excel.  But, that's really my only news for today, other than the fact that I spent a greater part of the afternoon writing a code to understand all of the variables and headings in the SPSS and Excel data. I basically created a list of all of the variable abbreviations we've been using and wrote down and explained what they meant so that if we don't see the data for a while we won't forget what all of the headings mean. Dr. Bopp read about this idea in an SPSS manual and we both felt that this was a such a great idea since we have so many headings that have been shortened and we are looking at so many things; it can be easy to forget everything! But other than that, things were business as usual in the office and I'm eager to finish up testing subjects over the next two days. Looking forward to the weekend as well!

Reagan

Research Never Ends

Hi all! I hope everyone is having a pleasant Wednesday! May it also be noted that exactly two weeks from today, interim will be over and at this exact moment I may be presenting my research findings to the Independent Research interim group and anyone else who decides to listen in on the presentations. This is both terrifying and exciting, because I cannot believe that interim is already half-way over and that I only have 2 weeks to pull together a paper and a powerpoint presentation for my peers. As always, things will work out but this realization that I really only have two weeks left made everything feel like it was happening so quickly! However, although I realized I only have two weeks left, I spoke to Dr. Bopp today about doing even more research. As stated in the title of this blog, the research never ends! For this entire month, I have only been gathering young adults for the cognition study I am working on; however, the entire study includes a group of older adults as well. Thus, Dr. Bopp and I discussed running tests and gathering the data for the older adult age group this spring and in the early part of the summer, so that we can completely finish up this research project. This is very exciting and I'm really excited that I will be able to continue with the project because I am already so invested in the study that I can't stop now! I will also likely be spending a fair portion of my summer writing up the article for the current study (and possibly another study) as we work toward publication of the experiment. I honestly never though I would like (or rather love) research this much, but I do and I can't wait to continue what I am doing right now. So this has been the highlight of my Wednesday, in addition to running tests on my lovely subjects (you know who you are, and thank you!) and doing data analysis as always. I hope your day has been equally exciting...

Reagan