When you get a PhD, no one tells you how much of your research career will be spent doing admin, planning, and meetings! Today was a day filled with an abundance of these auxiliary tasks that keep research projects running on time and within allocated resourcing. From ethics, to stakeholder meetings about our research, to public communications, and getting ready for our intern, it was a packed day.
Continue reading “Planning Research”
To explain the analysis planning that we’re doing at the moment, I’ll tell you about our broader methodology that we use for all our randomised control trials.
Continue reading “Methodology for Running a Project”
I drafted the email it’s going up to our executives seeking endorsement of our latest randomised control trial. It’s one of many steps that we still need to take before we can proceed and it’ll probably be two months before we get secretary sign off (the final approval before we can begin preparing to go into the field).
Continue reading “Writing an Executive Email”
My team and I are working from home, but today, I was required to go into the office. I conducted a mini visual ethnography of my travels. Even though it’s early days of COVID-19 lockdown, there was a lot of positive observance of the Public Health Order, though signs and physical cues can be improved (‘change architecture’).
Continue reading “Visual Ethnography of Lockdown”
Today was packed with challenges, met with valiance. Applied research is never easy. Sometimes compelling data and a statistically significant result aren’t enough to drive change. Instead, we may need to create a case to have findings and recommendations actioned.
Continue reading “Making Research Stick”
Today I reflect on an important meeting for one of our projects. We’ve had a lot of setbacks because we don’t have useful data sources or infrastructure to enable us to run a proper randomised control trial. I discuss one example of how we assess the viability of our projects, and what this activity looks like in the context of a typical day as an applied researcher.
Continue reading “Assessing the Viability of an Applied Research Project”
Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be sharing my work journals, so you get another insight into the working life of applied social scientists! Today is typical day. I had to put together two different presentations: one about our research methods and the other one is about results from our field work.
Continue reading “Presenting Information for Policy Audiences”
Reflections on my most joyful project, and dealing with sexism and racial inequality in the workplace.
Continue reading “Institutional Racism”
More insights on what it’s like squeezing in my personal research admist a long (paid) working day. I also discuss why I’m getting ready to give a talk about my professional experiences working in equity and diversity.
Continue reading “Reflections on Equity and Diversity Work”
I worked from home. My team is great that way. I get a lot of flexibility to work remotely. I spent most of the day writing two chapters for our annual report, which are based on my projects.
Continue reading “Research Reporting”