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Do you hate research? Are you on the fence about getting into research or spending countless hours working on literature reviews? I have been there too. Before college, I dreaded research. I thought research could only be numbers, a culmination of statistical significance and equations. It wasn’t until I started college that this narrative shifted, and I found the power of storytelling and narratives through qualitative research. Recently, I have discovered how quantitative and qualitative research should continuously work in tandem to strengthen one another. Over the past three years, I have strengthened various research skills through data collection and analysis. Additionally, my soft skills have been bolstered through developing open and honest conversations with study participants. My inability to appreciate research genuinely stemmed from my lack of knowledge and desire. I did not understand how social science research could be conducted, its importance, and how it could be conducted in various settings. I did not understand how storytelling could play a role in research. As a clinical psychology major, it is very common to engage with research in one setting or another (shoutout to the Experimental Psychology course where you conduct a study). 

Curiosity is the fuel that fires research. The only way that I knew research was for me was by seeing where my curiosities lead and reflecting on what I found enjoyable about the research process. Quite honestly, research can be tedious, taxing, and frustrating. Many steps go into the process of conducting research from starting with a literature review to developing your research questions and finding the gap you hope to fill. There is an extensive amount of patience one should learn to have when going through this process. During my freshman year, I joined one of my professor’s research studies as she started to explore the impacts of misrepresentation, a lack of representation, and erasure in children’s media. This was done to understand the experiences of people that go overlooked and to learn how to strengthen inclusivity throughout the research. In prior literature, there was a dearth of studies that highlighted the invisible wounds that media representation can hold, especially for adolescents. My group’s research study filled gaps in the literature by assessing how college students recall representation or lack thereof in the media they consumed growing up. We have used the findings from this work to raise awareness of issues surrounding representation in children’s media. I have also had opportunities to present this work at various conferences which can be a nerve-wracking, but exciting part of research. I have also gained amazing opportunities from attending conferences to traveling abroad. When it comes to research, there are endless possibilities for what you can do with it.

Exploring qualitative research before quantitative allowed me to lean into the aspect of qualitative research that explores narratives and hones into storytelling. Through my exploration of research, I have learned how to lean into my curiosities. If you are on the fence about exploring research, I would suggest that you try it out, because you never know what could come from it. 

There are various research programs that Tufts offers depending on your interests and which school you’re in for you to explore. Through Tufts, I have become a Laidlaw Scholar, a research and leadership program that allows undergraduates to conduct hands-on research and gain leadership skills for two consecutive summers. Through this program, I had the opportunity to spend my first summer conducting independent research and the second summer, abroad in Fiji for 6 weeks to participate in a youth empowerment campaign focused on understanding the impacts of climate change on Pacific Islanders. Additionally, I am also a Summer Scholar, so I spent another summer conducting independent research, but this time I focused on preparing for my senior thesis which explores how college students gain their understanding of mental health issues based on their media consumption and exposure. I continue to return to research because of my passion to learn and understand more, even if I fall asleep after only reading one research paper… If anything from this blog post resonated with you and you have a stronger interest in getting involved in research in your respective field of interest, then woo! If not, that’s still amazing because now you know you might not like research. If you’re interested in figuring out how to get involved with research, reach out to professors and see if they are working on something or find research programs to gain some experience. If you have any questions about how to get into social sciences and humanities research or any larger research questions, feel free to reach out at alvalyn.dixon@tufts.edu!