reflection about doing a research

Personal Reflection Sample: preparing a Research Report for ACCA

The skill and learning statement includes the implications of interactions with mentor, an analysis of the extent to which research questions have been answered, a brief analysis of interpersonal and communication skills and their relevance to the research, as well as the contribution of the research experience to my professional and personal development.

1.      Experiences of interactions with mentor

I had chances of meeting my project mentor three times and obtained practical support regarding various aspects of the work during these meetings. Our first meeting was mainly dedicated to clarifying our expectations from the research experience and the discussions took place related to the issues of selection of the research approach and formulation of research questions and objectives.

By the time I had a meeting with my mentor for the second time Introduction and Information gathering chapters of the work have been completed and I received detailed feedback for these chapters of the research. Also, discussions were held about data analysis and presentation associated with the project.

During the final meeting with my mentor the overall work has been scrutinised and a set of specific points have been mentioned by my mentor. Specifically, my mentor raised a point that my discussions of research findings lacked depth and scale. Then, these points have been addressed and the final draft of the Research Report was completed.

I found advices given by my mentor very helpful in terms of increasing the quality of my Research Report and equipping me with knowledge of effectively conducting similar studies in the future in general. Moreover, my Project Mentor was not only highlighting the shortages that were associated with my project, but also was giving detailed explanations why these changes were desirable in a passionate manner.

Furthermore, I found these three sessions with my mentor to be highly motivational and informative experience because they have increased the level of my personal interest in conducting businesses studies. Prior to conducting the Research Report and having discussions with my mentor I was assuming conducting analytical business studies to be a rather boring experience.

However, thanks to my mentor I learned to appreciate the importance of analysing a business case in terms of identifying a current strategic and financial position of a business, and formulating the ways of identifying further strategic options available to the business.

2.      The extent to which research questions have been answered

Answering the research questions in my Research Report were directly related to the quality of secondary data, and the choice of methodology. Therefore, these issues were approached effectively by critically assessing the validity of the sources of secondary data and assessing alternative choices of methodology. Moreover, my first meeting with my Project mentor was mainly devoted to the discussion of the same issues.

As a result of comprehensive analysis the most reliable sources of secondary data in order to be used in Research Report were found to include published financial statements and annual reports, textbooks on financial and business analysis, information published in official company website, information available from ACCA website, as well as, various business journals an newspapers.

The choice of methods for conducting the study, on the other hand, was guided by the reliability of the data analysis methods and their relevance to the research issues. After spending additional amount of time for the choice of appropriate methodology and taking into account advises of my mentor, financial ratios and analytic tools have been chosen to be employed in my Research Report.

Purposely, financial and accounting ratios that were used in the study include profitability, liquidity, financial position and investor ratios, whereas, the choice of analytic tools consist of SWOT, PESTLE, and Porter’s five forces analysis.

To summarise this part, it is fair to state that all of the research questions in my Research Report have been effectively addressed, because the secondary data have been obtained from reliable sources, relevant methodology has been used to conduct the study, and the research findings have been critically discussed.

3.      Interpersonal and communication skills and their relevance to the research

I have demonstrated my interpersonal and communication skills at various stages of doing Research Report and preparing for and making the presentation. Moreover, without my interpersonal and communication skills completing the Research Report and doing the presentation would have proved to be highly challenging.

For example, my listening skills have proved to be highly valuable in terms of understanding vital information given by my mentor about increasing the quality of my Research Report, because these advises were fully understood and implemented into the practice.

My interpersonal skills have also played a positive role when I asked some of my trusted colleagues to be an audience when I was rehearsing my presentation. I was making presentations in front of my colleagues and was asking for their opinions about the quality of my presentation. This practice took place many times in different settings and I believe that following this strategy has enhanced the quality of my presentation and my marks.

However, my communication skills have played a crucial role in terms of succeeding in making the presentation effectively. I have learned from my experiences within and outside of academic settings that communication skills play the most crucial role in terms of succeeding in personal and professional lives.

For instance, an individual may possess a deep knowledge about a certain area. However, if the individual lacks competency of communicating his or her ideas, knowledge and feelings in an effective manner, the overall competency of the individual and the level of his or her contribution to the organisation will always remain compromised.

Therefore, in my opinion, regardless of the field, industry or type of organisation, communication skills can be specified as a compulsory attribute for an employee in order to be considered an a competent. In my case in particular, my advanced level of communication skills have enabled me to do my Research Report presentation effectively which has resulted in positive acclaim from my peers and mentor.

4.      The potential contribution of Research Report to the level of professional development

Conducting the Research Report and doing the presentation has increased the level of my professional competency in several ways. First of all, I have to mention the fact that I have developed a critical mindset towards solving business issues as a result of conducting the Research Report.

My mentor made it clear that it was important to critically analyse related issues in Research Report rather than just offering description of the issues and supplying calculations. The mentor had stressed many times that critical analysis and discussions are the elements of the work that increase its value. For the same reason I had to revise my Research Report several times until my mentor was satisfied with the level of critical analysis the work had included.

Although, such an approach to work seemed to be very challenging and confusing during the research process, I appreciated the value of critical analysis once the final work was completed. The skills of critical analysis that I have developed and applied in Research Report can easily be applied when real business issues would need to be resolved by me in the future in my professional capacity.

Completing the Research Report was similar to project management in real businesses environment in terms of strict deadlines, scarcity of resources, organising and planning, scheduling meetings, doing presentations etc. Therefore, the skills I developed during the process of completing Research Report can be used in order to successfully manage business projects in the future.

Moreover, my writing skills have also been greatly improved as a result of engaging in Research Report. Despite the popular opinion that with the increasing importance of information technology the practice of writing letters and reports are being replaced by alternative means of business communications, the importance of writing will always remain significant for business managers.

From this point of view engaging in Research Report was a very beneficial experience for me on a personal level. Specifically, writing the paper of almost ten thousand words in total, including this personal reflection, has made me better prepared to join the full-time workforce once my studies are completed.

Lastly, as a result of preparing the Research Report my professional interest on the issues associated with corporate strategy has been enhanced. Moreover, I am planning to continue studying the issues of corporate strategy and that knowledge would benefit me in the future as a corporate leader.

5.      Gains derived from conducting Research Report experience on a personal level

On a personal level I benefited from conducting the Research Report and doing the presentation in a number of ways. The research experience with Oxford Brookes has increased the level of my motivation for studying, making bold plans for my future career and implements necessary measures and initiatives in order to accomplish these plans. My mentor deserves to be mentioned here specifically for all encouragements and practical tips that can be applied in various alternative settings apart from academic life.

The level of my self-confidence has also been increased because I could complete the Research Report in time. Moreover, the presentation experience has increased the level of my self-confidence dramatically, because I understood that if I could do a successful presentation in front of my mentor and colleagues, doing the presentations of multi-million projects in front of top executives was just a matter of time.

The paramount importance of self-confidence for an individual is an undisputable matter. Self-confidence allows us to set ambitious plans and utilise all the available resources efficiently in order to achieve these plans.

My time-management skills have also been improved by the end of the Research Report. This is because there was a specific deadline for both, the Research Report and presentation and I had to adopt some principles related to time management in order to be able to submit my work on time.

These principles included setting specific deadlines for each chapter of the work, and above all, dramatically cutting the amount of time I used to browse social networking sites on the internet. I can highlight this fact as one of the most substantial gains in a personal level. This is because prior to the research experience I used to spend several hours a day browsing a set of social networking sites with no real benefit whatsoever. However, once the priority was given to the Research Project, this bad habit was dealt with effectively and irreversibly.

6.      Conclusions

To summarise, completing the Research Report and making presentation with Oxford Brookes University following my ACCA course has increased the level of my preparedness to join the full-time workforce and successfully utilise my energy and knowledge. In my opinion the biggest benefit I received from enrolling to this course of study is that the course of study, the Research Report and doing the presentation have made me to believe in my skills and capabilities and they have also awoke my desire to approach studying as a lifelong process.

Moreover, I have obtained a set of professional and personal gains as a result of completing the Research Report and making presentation that include the development of a critical mindset, improvement my writing and time management skills and enhancement of the level of my self-confidence.

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Office of Undergraduate Research

Reflect on the experience.

The end of an experience is a great time to reflect on your learning. With every research experience you will gain new skills, learn more about the type of environment you enjoy being in, further explore your strengths and interests, and test out your motivation to further study or pursue a career in a field or discipline. In some cases, a research experience teaches you what you don’t want moving forward; this is an equally valuable learning experience that you need to recognize and use when evaluating what’s next.

Consider these questions, or those in the boxes below, to guide your reflection and prepare for conversations with your mentors to discuss your next steps.

• What is your overall reaction to and impression of your experience? Is this a subject you see yourself continuing to study? Is this research you would like to build on?
• How does your current knowledge of the work compare to what you imagined it would be like going into the experience? Did anything surprise you? Are there differences between what you thought it would be like and what it was actually like?
• Did you learn something about the field that you didn’t know before? Does this new knowledge impact your opinion of the work and motivation to further engage in research in the discipline?
• Consider your day-to-day tasks – what tasks did you find came easy to you/you did well at, and what tasks did you struggle with? Of those tasks you did well, did you enjoy them? If there were tasks you struggled with, are these areas where you want to challenge yourself to learn more and improve?
• What did you learn about yourself – your strengths and weaknesses – through engaging in a research experience? How do you plan to use this knowledge in navigating future endeavors?

I Learned…

• I learned...
• I learned this when...
• This matters because...
• I will use this knowledge to...
• What? (What did I learn?)
• So what? (Why does it matter?)
• Now what? (How will I build on this learning?)

What Have I Learned About…

• The process of research or creative activity?
• Myself, my strengths, and my areas for growth?
• How I learn and what conditions support my learning?
• My educational goals and career goals?

Then and Now

• What have I come to see differently because of my experience with this project?
• What do I know now that I didn't know then?
• What do I know now about what I don't know?
• How did I develop these skills through my engagement in this project?
• How did I demonstrate these skills through my engagement in this project?

Critical thinking/problem solving Teamwork/collaboration Leadership Oral/written communication Technology Professionalism/work ethic Self-awareness   career management Global perspective Research-specific skills

As your research experience is coming to a close, make a point to meet with your supervisor/faculty mentor to discuss the experience, your goals and interests, and next steps. Faculty mentors are a wonderful source of guidance, inspiration, and referrals. Go into this conversation with clear ideas as to what you enjoyed most about your research experience, how you want to incorporate or build on to the experience moving forward, and how the opportunity has shaped  your goals and interests.

Sample conversation starter:

During my experience working with you, I’ve found that I’m drawn towards and most enjoy ______________ ( doing/researching/analyzing/assisting with) __________ ( task or topic ). In thinking about how I can build on this experience, and taking into account my goal of ________________, I want to gain additional _________ ( experience/skills/knowledge) in _____________ (researching/exploring/analyzing)__________ (topic) . I’m wondering if you have suggestions on next steps that will help me _____________ ( learn/gain experience in/expand my skills) in____________ (task or topic) . As always, I sincerely appreciate any guidance you’re able to provide me.

Maintaining Relationships

Always thank everyone who contributed to your learning during a research experience. Hand-written thank you notes go a long way in demonstrating your appreciation and cementing your relationship with faculty mentors, supervisors, and TAs.

But the relationship doesn’t end there. Keep in touch by periodically sending updates and reminding them how they contributed to your learning and impacted your direction. Maintaining relationships is essential to having a rich pool of valued mentors you can draw from when seeking guidance or letters of recommendation.

• Schools & departments

General tips for academic reflections

An overview of key things to keep in mind for academic reflections.

Make sure you know what the assessor is asking for

Your main consideration when producing written or any kind of academic reflection is to know exactly what is expected of you. Therefore, you should ask your assessor what kind of language and structure they are expecting. With that in mind, the characteristics described here and in the sections on language and structure for academic reflections are what is often sought after.

Language of academic reflections

Structure of academic reflections

Using private reflections as foundations for academic reflections

Academic reflective writing is often used to evidence that you have done reflection. Therefore, it is often beneficial to first do a private reflection where you can be as informal and unstructured as you want, and then readapt that into a piece of academic writing.

By using a private reflection initially, you can ensure that you get the full learning opportunity without censoring yourself or being conscious of language, before deciding how best to present your reflections to your assessor. This is similar to figuring out what your argument is and taking notes before writing an essay, or to all the background work you do to solve a technical/mathematical problem that you do not include in your hand-in.

Just as developing your argument and working through each step of a problem can be essential for the final essay or hand-in, for some people doing a private reflection can be very helpful in writing an effective academic reflection. For others, writing their reflection in a formal and structured way from the outset helps them structure their thoughts.

The core elements of academic reflective writing

Academic reflective writing is a genre and just like an essay has characteristics, so does academic reflective writing.

Academic reflective writing requires critical and analytic thought, a clear line of argument, and the use of evidence through examples of personal experiences and thoughts and often also theoretical literature.

You should aim for a balance between personal experience, tone, and academic practice and rigor.

Academic reflective writing should:

• develop a perspective or line of reasoning
• develop a link between your experience or practice and existing knowledge (theoretical or personal)
• show understanding and appreciation of different perspectives to your own
• show recognition that your own understanding is likely incomplete and situations are rarely clear-cut and simplistic
• show learning resulting from the reflection (either by discovering something new or confirming existing knowledge) and how you plan to use it
• be written in an appropriate style with language relevant to your academic discipline
• sometimes, but not always, use theoretical literature to inform your understanding. 

People can have misconceptions about academic reflective writing – some of the common ones are described below.

Developed from:

Ryan, M., 2011. Improving reflective writing in higher education: a social semiotic perspective. Teaching in Higher Education, 16(1), 99-111.

University of Portsmouth, Department for Curriculum and Quality Enhancement (date unavailable). Reflective Writing: a basic introduction [online].  Portsmouth: University of Portsmouth.

Queen Margaret University, Effective Learning Service (date unavailable).  Reflection. [online].  Edinburgh: Queen Margaret University.

Research reflection guide

This page contains a guide and worksheet to help you reflect on a piece of research. 

The guide helps educators, teachers, leaders and policymakers reflect on a piece of research that provides evidence about the effectiveness of a particular policy, program or practice (that is, an approach), which they may be considering implementing.

Using the guide

First identify a piece of research evidence on a particular approach that you are considering implementing. Then, answer the series of guiding questions below that will prompt you to consider: what the research says; how relevant the research is to your context; whether you should implement the approach; and what you can do to ensure successful implementation.

The guide can be used individually or in a group as part of a community of practice.

Guiding questions

Objective questions.

• What does the research say? What policy, program or practice (i.e. approach ) is being evaluated? Where and when was this evaluation conducted? How many participants were involved?  
• How was the approach evaluated? What outcomes were looked at, and how were these outcomes measured? Was there a comparison between a group of individuals who experienced the approach and a group of individuals who did not experience the approach?  
• What standard of evidence does this research meet?  Is the evidence generated by the research causal or correlational? Causal evidence shows that the approach caused a change in outcomes. Correlational evidence shows that use of the approach is associated with a change in outcomes, but doesn’t rule out the possibility that the change was caused by something else, or by chance.

Reflective questions

• What connects with my experience?  What about the research is similar to my context and our current priorities? What aspects of the research are different to my context?  
• What excites me about the research? What might be possible in my context?

Interpretive questions

• What makes the approach work? According to the research, what are the key features of the approach that led to improved outcomes? What resources and organisational conditions (financial, human, logistical, curricular etc.) enabled success?  
• Would there be a benefit if I changed to this approach? What am I currently doing? What would I have to change in order to adopt this approach? Given what the research says, would any of the changes I make lead to improved outcomes? By how much do I think outcomes would improve? Alternatively, am I already doing something very similar to the approach, such that any changes might not improve outcomes further?
• What adaptations would I need to make? How aligned is this approach with existing system approaches? What about the approach will I need to change? Will any changes affect the key features? Will any adaptations make the approach less effective? Will any adaptations make the approach more effective?  
• What is the cost, in time, effort, and/or other resources, of changing? What will it cost me and/or my students to change what I’m doing? Where will this time, effort or other resources come from? If I implement this approach, what would it replace? What would be the consequences on my students of replacing my existing approach?

Decisive questions

Should I implement the approach? Are the potential benefits worth the costs of implementation?

• How can I rally resources to support implementation? How do I make implementation as smooth as possible? What resources and/or organisational supports do I need? How do I access these resources and/or supports?
• How will I be sure that implementation is effective? What data do I need to collect to track the effects of implementation? How will I know that any changes will be due to implementation of this new approach and not anything else?

The worksheet

The worksheet is designed for reflecting on primary studies, which are individual studies reporting on data collected and analysed by the researchers themselves. It isn’t designed for reflecting on research that summarises a body of evidence (for example, a literature review).

If you’re an educator or teacher, using this resource to reflect on research can help you to make decisions about your practice. If you’re a leader, you can use this resource to support your team to engage with evidence as part of their ongoing professional development.

Ways to use this resource

• Personal professional learning to become more familiar with research.
• Professional learning in a group, such as a community of practice – use the completed worksheets to discuss the education approach as team.
• Keep the completed worksheet as a record of decision-making about a particular approach.
• Revisit the completed worksheet as a reminder of the questions you may still have about an approach (and to focus your efforts on seeking answers).
• Use the questions to structure discussions about an approach with colleagues. 

Worked example

Robyn is the Centre Director at a community kindergarten and early childhood education and care (ECEC) service owned and managed by the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The service is in the outer suburbs of an Australian capital city. All children who attend come from an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander background. All speak English as their first language.

Robyn recently read about the Abecedarian Approach Australia in an online blog and has followed up by reading the  original journal article  to better understand whether the approach is evidence-based and would be relevant for her centre.

Research reflection guide: My notes

About the research article.

Title:  An Abecedarian Approach with Aboriginal Families and Their Young Children in Australia: Playgroup Participation and Developmental Outcomes Author/s:  Jane Page, Megan L. Cock, Lisa Murray, Tricia Eadie, Frank Niklas, Janet Scull, Joseph Sparling Journal:  International Journal of Early Childhood Publication date:  1 August 2019

What does the research say?

What approach was evaluated? Is the approach described clearly enough that I could replicate it? Does the description raise any questions?

Robyn's notes:

The study explored whether the ‘Abecedarian Approach Australia (3a)’ improved early language and learning skills of Aboriginal children attending Families as First Teachers early childhood playgroups. They specifically used the Conversational Reading and Learning Games that are two main elements of the approach. Described in plenty of detail on pp.238-239. Appears to require use of a suite of 200 Learning Games that are copyrighted, and staff need to be trained to use them. It would be good to find out more about how to access the Learning Games and training.

Where and when was the research conducted? Is the research recent enough to be relevant?

Yes it’s recent - research was done in 2 remote Northern Territory communities between 2015 and 2017 and published in 2019. 

Number of participants

Do the authors justify the sample size or discuss sample size in the limitations section?

191 Aboriginal children in 2 communities but only 149 who had data collected. There’s no discussion of sample size. However, the authors clearly describe the sample and explain that they wanted to maximise the number of children who were eligible to participate in the study. The sample was different for different parts of the analysis.

How was the approach evaluated?

What outcomes were measured?

Are these outcomes relevant to me?

Outcomes measured were language development, early academic skills and motor skills. These are key outcomes for the children – so yes, relevant.

How were the outcomes measured?

Do the authors provide evidence that their methods for measurement are valid and reliable ways to measure these outcomes?

Used a standardised instrument called the Brigance Early Childhood Screen but they adapted it to make it culturally appropriate for remote Aboriginal communities – many children didn’t speak English as their first language. The adaptations and the process of making them are described in detail in an Appendix – it appears valid.

Was there a comparison between a group who experienced the approach and a group who didn’t?

How were participants assigned to each group? Was it random? If not random, do the authors explain how the groups were similar enough for a comparison to be valid?

No. The Families as First Teachers playgroups are provided by the Northern Territory government, and they all use the Abecedarian approach. The playgroups are available to anyone who chooses to attend – the researchers couldn’t randomly assign children to attend or not attend.

The study analysed whether children who had greater participation in the program had better outcomes than those who had less participation. The researchers refer to this as the children’s level of ‘dosage’. The researchers grouped children into low, medium or high participation based on how often they attended the playgroup (and did at least one activity) and how many Conversational Reading interactions and Learning Games they participated in when they attended.

The only information about the children is gender, age and the community they live in so you can’t tell if the groups are similar on other characteristics. And the number of children in the high dosage group is much smaller than in the medium and low groups.

What standard of evidence does the research meet?

What did the research find?

The study was with Aboriginal children attending free playgroups in remote Northern Territory communities. It found that children who had higher dosage of the Abecedarian activities had better outcomes than children who had lower dosage – high was better than medium and medium was better than low.

Is this causal evidence or correlational evidence?

Because children weren’t randomly assigned to groups it’s possible the groups were different and that something else caused the results – maybe the families who went to the playgroup less often were busier or had other reasons for not being able to attend? The study wasn’t able to account for those things. There have been randomised control trials with other cohorts of children around the world though, and the article references a small randomised trial with Aboriginal children conducted by other researchers. Even though this study isn’t designed to test causal inferences, I’m pretty confident the approach itself is evidence-based. Page 4 says that the Abecedarian approach was selected ‘because of the quality, scale and impact of the empirical research and its well developed educational focus on children from birth to age 3’.

What connects with my experience?

In what ways is the research similar or different to my context?

What do the authors say about the context? Does it appear that the context was important for the results or is it likely the approach would be just as effective in a different context?

This study was in two remote Aboriginal communities with children who mainly didn’t speak English but the Abecedarian approach has been used in many different contexts – it started in the United States. In fact, the remote context is seen as a challenge by the authors so there’s no reason to think the program wouldn’t be useful for Aboriginal students in my city location. Like the study locations, our staff are Aboriginal and we have people from the local community volunteering or on staff. The study highlights that the number of times children engage in Conversational Reading and Learning Games with adults matters. It doesn’t give a minimum dosage needed to see improvement so we need to make sure that will be okay in our context – some of our children don’t attend regularly.

What excites me about the research?

What might be possible in my context? 

What do I like best about this approach? Does anything concern me? Do I feel motivated to try it in my context? Why or why not?

This looks like something we could do but I need to investigate how to access the Learning Games and other materials, and find more guidance on implementing the activities. The researchers mention the importance of fidelity of implementation a few times – this means that it’s important that the program is implemented exactly as intended. There’s training to make sure we can do that. I’ve heard good things about Abecedarian before but didn’t know the Learning Games (which is a main element of the approach) had been adapted for Aboriginal children. Based on what I’ve read here I definitely want to find out more.

What makes the approach work?

What does the research say about the key features that led to improved outcomes?

What resources and organisational features enabled success? Does it seem that this would translate to my setting? Why or why not?

Key features aren’t really mentioned but the article says it’s important to use both the Conversational Reading and the Learning Games (not just one or the other). Though how often children and adults engage in them is important. There are special materials to use, and training in the approach. Since dosage matters it would be important that children attended the centre on enough days to benefit from the approach. High dosage was at least 80 sessions in this study which seems achievable for us. It’s also important that children engage in Conversational Reading and Learning Games in daily programs. We should plan for Conversational Reading and Learning Games throughout the day (indoors and outdoors).

Would there be a benefit if I changed to this approach?

What am I currently doing?

How different is this approach to what I’m already doing? How much would I be changing if I implemented this approach?

We try to engage parents now but not in the focused way it’s done in Abecedarian. This would be more structured and intentional than the reading and educational games we currently do with the children. That could create greater consistency between educators which would be good. It would be quite a big change but it’s doable.

Based on the research and my current practice, would changing be likely to lead to improved outcomes?

Why do I think this? By how much are outcomes likely to improve?

It’s hard to know how much this would improve outcomes. I think our children might get a higher dosage and they’re probably starting from a higher base than the children in the study (hard to tell as the article doesn’t include the Brigance scores). Also, I think we’d get better engagement from our parents/carers than in the study. So I think we should see at least as much improvement as in the study. I could talk to other centres or look for more research before deciding whether to go further with this.

What adaptations would I need to make?

How aligned is this approach with existing system approaches?

Would I need to adapt the approach for my context? Why or why not? If yes, what would I need to adapt? Why? Will this affect the key features I identified above? Could it make the approach less effective? More effective?

No, I wouldn’t need to adapt. The approach has been used in numerous contexts and the Learning Games have already been adapted for Aboriginal children. Also implementing with fidelity seems important – there’s training and materials to use – so I don’t want to change anything.

What is the cost (time, effort, resources) of changing?

What is the cost to me or the children/students in terms of time, effort and resources?

Where will this time, effort and/or other resources come from? If I implement this approach, what would it replace? Would I be replacing something I’m confident is effective? What would be the consequences of replacing my existing approach for the children/students?

Financial cost for training – there’s a practitioner course and a trainer course with an Australian Uni. It looks like one person can become a trainer then train others. I’ll do some searches to find out more about these options. Maybe a grant? Working with carers is a core part of the approach that will take extra time and effort – we’ve been wanting to do more parent engagement anyway so I’m happy with that. I see this improving our interactions with children and carers rather than replacing anything.

Should I implement the approach?

Are the benefits worth the costs?

How have I arrived at that conclusion? How confident am I?

I need to check financial costs before deciding. If we have the money then the benefits look worth the costs. I’m confident staff will be on board – the approach aligns with what we’re already aiming to achieve and how we work.

If I implement the approach:

How can I rally resources to support implementation? What support will I need and where can I find it?

It would take a while to embed the whole approach and train staff – perhaps we could just try it in the 4-year-old room to start? Maybe we could embed 1 element first to gain fidelity with 1 element, and then embed the other (for example, Conversational Reading first, then Learning Games). This needs some thought.

I’ll take a proposal to the management committee next meeting to discuss once I’m clear on the cost.

How will I be sure that implementation is effective?

What data will I need to collect?

How will I know that any changes are due to the change or approach and not something else?

We wouldn’t be able to use a screening tool like the Brigance used in the study but the observations of children that we already collect provide good data. We could also collect feedback from parents/ carers in our half yearly interviews with them. I know other ECEC services use the approach so I’ll ask them what changes they’ve seen and how they monitor monitor whether it’s making a difference.

Now that Robyn has reflected on the research, she can decide what to do next. She can choose actions that apply to her context. She could:

• keep the completed worksheet as a record of decision-making about a particular approach
• revisit the completed worksheet as a reminder about what questions she may still have about an approach (and to focus her efforts on seeking answers)
• use the completed worksheets to discuss the education approach as team, for example as part of professional learning in a group community of practice
• use the questions to structure discussions about an approach with colleagues
• searching academic search engines or Google Scholar
• checking the website of the authors’ institution
• contacting the authors directly to ask specific questions about the approach
• find out if professional learning is available to support the approach.

Robyn decides she wants to use the completed worksheet to discuss the approach with her team. But first, she decides to find out more about the Abecedarian approach.

She takes the following steps:

• She checks the authors’ institution (the University of Melbourne) and finds information relating to Abecedarian Approach Australia (3a).
• She conducts a search on Google Scholar, using key words associated with the approach (for example, ‘Abecedarian Approach Australia’).
• She searches the institution website and finds the Research in Effective Education in Early Childhood (REEaCh) website has research briefs reporting on the approach, as well as other related research.
•  the authors’ institution website and finds information about 3a Practitioner, Coach and Affiliate training programs
• government education websites to see whether there is funding available to access the training.

Keywords: practice implementation

• Evidence - use & generation
• Professional learning
• Evaluating non-academic sources
• Standards of evidence

Australia's national education evidence body

Learning By Thinking: How Reflection Improves Performance

• Learning from direct experience can be more effective if coupled with reflection-that is, the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience.
• Reflecting on what has been learned makes experience more productive.
• Reflection builds one's confidence in the ability to achieve a goal (i.e., self-efficacy), which in turn translates into higher rates of learning.

Author Abstract

Research on learning has primarily focused on the role of doing (experience) in fostering progress over time. In this paper, we propose that one of the critical components of learning is reflection, or the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience. Drawing on dual-process theory, we focus on the reflective dimension of the learning process and propose that learning can be augmented by deliberately focusing on thinking about what one has been doing. We test the resulting dual-process learning model experimentally, using a mixed-method design that combines two laboratory experiments with a field experiment conducted in a large business process outsourcing company in India. We find a performance differential when comparing learning-by-doing alone to learning-by-doing coupled with reflection. Further, we hypothesize and find that the effect of reflection on learning is mediated by greater perceived self-efficacy. Together, our results shed light on the role of reflection as a powerful mechanism behind learning.

Paper Information

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• Working Paper Publication Date: March 2014
• HBS Working Paper Number: 14-093
• Faculty Unit(s): Negotiation, Organizations & Markets ; Technology and Operations Management
• 18 Jun 2024
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How do students' perceptions of research and approaches to learning change in undergraduate research?

Rintaro imafuku.

1 Medical Education Development Center, Gifu University, Gifu, Japan

Takuya Saiki

Chihiro kawakami, yasuyuki suzuki.

This study aimed to examine how students' perceptions of research and learning change through participation in undergraduate research and to identify the factors that affect the process of their engagement in re-search projects.

This qualitative study has drawn on phenomenography as research methodology to explore third-year medical students' experiences of undergraduate research from participants' perspectives (n=14). Data included semi-structured individual interviews conducted as pre and post reflections. Thematic analysis of pre-course interviews combined with researcher-participant observations in-formed design of end-of-course interview questions.

Phenomenographic data analysis demonstrated qualitative changes in students' perceptions of research. At the beginning of the course, the majority of students ex-pressed a relatively narrow definition of research, focusing on the content and outcomes of scientific research. End-of-course reflections indicated increased attention to research processes including researcher autonomy, collaboration and knowledge construction processes. Furthermore, acknowledgement of the linkage between research and learning processes indicated an epistemological change leading them to take a deep approach to learning in undergraduate research. Themes included: an inquiring mind, synthesis of knowledge, active participation, collaborative and reflective learning. However, they also encountered some difficulties in undertaking group research projects. These were attributed to their prior learning experiences, differences in valuing towards interpersonal communication, understanding of the research process, and social relationships with others.

Conclusions

This study provided insights into the potential for undergraduate research in medical education. Medical students' awareness of the linkage between research and learning may be one of the most important outcomes in the undergraduate research process.

Introduction

Research activity is considered one of the high-impact educational practices in that the vital skills and attitude for lifelong learners can be cultivated through inquiry. 1 - 3 Undergraduate research was defined as any teaching and learning activity in which undergraduate students are actively engaged with the research content, process or problems of their discipline. 4 That is, research is not merely pursuit of academic career and advancement of knowledge (i.e., content). Rather, it also includes an aspect of learning process. 5 - 7 Development of research skills is also important in health professions education. 8 , 9

Research activities by undergraduates are a powerful way of enhancing medical students' basic skills and attitude necessary for future professional practice. Inquiry and an evidence-based medicine (EBM) approach are complimentary processes in that they include recognition of important questions, search for the best research evidence, critical appraisal of the evidence, and application of the evidence to practice. 10 - 12 Modern clinicians, therefore, have to understand both the principles of research and how evidence is derived. 13

Integration of EBM elements into the undergraduate medical curriculum now has increasing significance. For instance, in the first edition of Tomorrow's Doctors issued in 1993, the General Medical Council (GMC) urged innovation in UK undergraduate medical curricula in order to reduce direct instruction of factual content and provide more inquiry-based, student-centred learning environments. 8 One radical change was the introduction of extensive student choice of study modules, which is currently termed 'student selected components' (SSCs). Basically, these curricula provide medical students with opportunities to select study areas of interest and to pursue what they want to know through inquiry. This can potentially be pedagogically effective vehicles for critical appraisal and research skill development. 13 , 14 Likewise, in Japan, 63 out of 80 medical schools have implemented a research-based course in the undergraduate curriculum. 15 Although the duration, study area and assessment method are different among the schools, the common educational purpose is to provide opportunities leading to the development of research skills and basic skills necessary to continuing professional development.

Although research activity as an educational practice has been increasingly employed in a variety of disciplines as well as in diverse cultural contexts, students might take different preferred approaches to learning across cultures. 16 - 19 For instance, Asian students have been portrayed as typically passive, uncritical and rote learners. Asian students' strong perceptions of teachers as knowledge providers are considered one of the influential factors that affect their passive participation in a classroom. 16 On the other hand, there is a paradox between such a description of Asian learners and their academic attainment. 17 - 19 Marton and Dall'Alba indicated the qualitatively different ways of experiencing learning in different cultural contexts. 19 Given the variation in ways individuals experience various phenomena, it is important to understand how Asian learners participate in a student-centred learning environment. As students need to undertake a collective research project in this study, mutual engagement is essential to the process of undergraduate research.

While there is a plethora of discussions on learning outcomes in undergraduate research based on the findings underpinned by a quantitative research paradigm, few studies have examined epistemological changes in research and learning through qualitative analysis of students' research activity. 13 Therefore, this study was undertaken as an initial investigation into this area. A better understanding of students' research experiences from an emic viewpoint allows educators to clearly identify why and how research activity promotes meaningful learning. Furthermore, identifying factors that affect students' research activity can provide important practical implications to effectively encourage and facilitate research opportunities for students. In order to make contribution to this gap in the literature, this study aimed to investigate 1) how students' perceptions of research and learning change through participation in undergraduate research; and 2) what factors affect the process of their engagement in undergraduate research.

Research approach

Qualitative research methods were used for this study, which was particularly underpinned by phenomenography. The rationale of drawing on phenomenography in this study is that the changes in people's ways of interpreting the nature of research generally take place through their own experience of research and interaction with others. 20 Phenomenography allows an examination of "the ways in which people experience, conceptualise, perceive, and understand a phenomenon from their own perspectives." 21 Investigations with a phenomenographic orientation thus focus more on exploration of what is experienced and howit is experienced (i.e., "second-order perspective") than description of the world itself (i.e., "first-order perspective"). 17 , 20 , 21 Within this setting, students' learning processes in undergraduate research are not analysed in terms of what students learned or remembered but rather attends to the relationship between students and the phenomenon. In particular, we briefly describe how phenomenography interprets a relationship between students' approaches to learning.

Phenomenography enables a mapping of the qualitatively different approaches to learning that students adopt. Students' approaches to learning are not regarded as the personality traits or fixed learning styles, but determined through interaction of a student with a specific learning context. 22 Phenomenographers have identified three main types of approaches to learning: deep, surface and strategic approaches. 22 - 24 A deep approach to learning involves relating new ideas to previous knowledge and examining the logic of the argument critically, and leads to understanding and long-term retention of concepts. Thus, learners who take a deep approach to learning primarily focus on seeking meaning. In contrast, a surface approach to learning is associated with information reproducing. For instance, students who take a surface approach to learning try to make use of rote learning, memorize information needed for assessment, take a narrow view and concentrate on detail. A strategic approach to learning is taken to obtain high grades and other rewards. The learning strategies of this approach include identifying the assessment criteria and estimating the learning effort, following up all suggested readings, and using previous exam paper to predict questions. Although deep and surface approaches are mutually exclusive, a strategic approach can be linked to either, that is, surface-strategic or deep-strategic approach. These three pre-identified categories were examined simultaneously with the more inductive labelling process.

Research site

Generally, Japanese medical schools have a 6-year undergraduate curriculum which consists of general education (the first year), pre-clinical studies (the middle 2.5-3 years), and clinical clerkships and preparation for national board examinations (the last 2 years). Sixty out of 80 Japanese medical schools implement a research-based course in the pre-clinical study periods. 15

The context of this study was Gifu University School of Medicine. There was a mandatory course of "Research Experience" in which all third-year students (n=106) selected a 10-week subject or two 5-week subjects from 23 research themes of basic, social or clinical medical sciences, such as anatomy, legal medicine and paediatrics, and then pursued a research topic of interest. It predominantly involved project work, and there were no other classes during the 'research' weeks to detract from their learning experiences through inquiry. As a summative assessment, they were required to give poster and oral group presentations in front of all third-year students and faculty in the final week.

Medical education research was a 5-week course in 2013, and was altered to a 10-week course in 2014. Class meetings (2-3 hours) were basically scheduled three days a week, and the rest of class time in a week (21 hours) was allotted to self-directed research activity. In every class, students were encouraged to discuss research design and to give a progress report. Academic staff in medical education centre participated as mentors who encourage students to undertake a research project as autonomously as possible.

Participants

A purposive sampling was adopted, and 14 third-year medical students (9 male, 5 female: S1-S14) who selected medical education research in 2013 or 2014 agreed to participate in this study. They conducted medical education research projects about medical students' perceptions of career choices, learning experiences in PBL tutorials, or gender differences in perceptions of career and family among students. S1 has had some research experience as a student research assistant and S8 holds a Master's degree in psychology. However, the rest of participants has little experience in conducting research.

In order to achieve the consistency of research context, we carried out data collection only in the medical education centre, because the course structure varied according to the research field, such as the role of tutor and duration/frequency of class meeting. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Gifu University.

Data collection

This qualitative study drew upon methods of direct observation and semi-structured interviews. Observations allow for insight into contexts, relationships and behaviour by better understanding what participants do. The first author as a participant observer in the two academic years of the study made records to capture the details of students' participation in the course. To deal with observer effect, we did not reveal the specific focus of the observation, but obtained students' consent to observe their learning activities. These observational data were rigorously analysed to gain emic understandings of the context of student research activity and to inform the development of the second (post) interview guide as to more closely situate it to each individual's context.

Each participant was invited to be interviewed twice during the course. The first interview (pre) was conducted in the second week of the course, and the second interview (post) was in the final (fifth or tenth) week of the course. Each interview lasted around 25 to 45 minutes, and was audio-recorded. Japanese transcripts were translated into English by the first author.

In the first interviews, we attempted to elicit information on students' prior experiences, perceptions of research, understanding of student roles and on-going experiences in this programme. Prior research findings in phenomenography have informed the first interview schedule. 22 , 25 In the second, follow-up interviews, we focused on eliciting information on challenges which they found in the process of undertaking a group research project; their approaches to researching; perceived benefits of undergraduate research; and; changes in their perceptions of research and learning. Moreover, we also asked some questions which were informed by the observational data (e.g., I felt you participated more actively than before. Why did your participation pattern change over time? ).

Data analysis procedures

Interview data were qualitatively analysed based on the principles of phenomenography as an empirical approach to describing the qualitatively different means of people's experience. 19 , 21 There are seven common steps of data analysis in phenomenography. 26 The first step is familiarization in which the researchers need to read through transcripts to become familiar with empirical data and obtain a sense of the whole. The second step involves compilation ofanswers from all respondents to a certain question. The most significant elements in the answer need to be identified here. The third step is a condensation of the individual answers to find the central part of longer answers. The fourth step contains a preliminary grouping ,and the researchers allocate answers expressing similar ways of understanding the phenomenon to the same category. The fifth step is a preliminary comparison of categories with regard to similarities and differences. The sixth step consists of labelling to express the core meaning of the category. The seventh step is a contrastive comparison of categories. Comparing the categories through a contrastive procedure, the unique character of the categories and its relationship between them are described.

Following these steps above, the data were carefully reviewed multiple times by the research team, and we inductively generated salient categories. In this process, peer debriefing was used as a technique to establish credibility and validity of the data analysis. That is, the authors worked together on the coding of data to prevent some critical problems of analysis, such as misinterpretation of data and vague descriptions of coding. Member checking was also undertaken to confirm whether researchers' interpretation of interview data was congruent with what participants intended to express.

Changes in perceptions of research

We examined Japanese medical students' reflection on and perceptions of their experiences in undergraduate research. In particular, the focus of the data analysis was on understanding how students' perceptions of research changed through their experiences of conducting research a project and how the change in epistemological belief regarding research relates to students' approaches to learning. The labelling procedures (see below) produced two core categories, 'content-oriented' and 'process-oriented' approaches to study. Contrastive comparison indicated that, of the total number of 14 students, 10 students' perceptions of research (S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S7, S8, S10, S11, and S14) qualitatively changed from 'content-oriented' to 'process-oriented' ones during the undergraduate research course. The remaining four students' perceptions of research (S6, S9, S12, and S13) remained 'content-oriented'. In what follows, we detail the establishment of these categories and the result of contrastive comparison.

Students' perceptions of research in Week 2

As to students' perception of research at the early stage of the programme, three main themes emerged from the first (pre) interview data: irrelevant activity to undergraduates' life, research methods and outcomes ( Table 1 ). In the first interview, the majority of students expressed a relatively narrow definition of research, focusing on the content and outcomes of scientific research.

In response to what students mean by research in the first interview, some students were not clear about what research is due to their less experience of conducting research. They said that research was irrelevant activity to undergraduates' life in that research tended to be regarded as an activity only by people who pursue academic career, such as postgraduate-level and faculty-level:

"I don't feel familiar with research activity because I haven't conducted it. Since I think research is an activity for becoming academics, I'm not really interested in conducting research, and it is irrelevant to medical students, who want to actively take part in clinical practice, not research position, in the future, like me." (S2, Group 1, Week 2, 2013)

In addition, medical students in this study conceived research as experiment, hypothesis testing or lonely activity of scientists. The term "research" tended to give the medical students a certain impression in association with science experiment.

"In my understanding, research is to make a microscopic study in a scientific laboratory all the day. There is no chance to communicate with others. So, I have a negative impression that research is a lonely activity." (S6, Group 2, Week 2, 2013)

"I think that research means verifying hypotheses through repeated same experiments. So, it is conducted so as to reveal the truth logically based on objective data. I feel it boring and time consuming." (S13, Group 3, Week 2, 2014)

Lastly, their perception of research was related to its outcome and output. Students emphasized "an epoch-making discovery" and "advancement of knowledge" as keywords regarding research. They tended to regard research as scientists' activity which presents new perspective of a certain study field and solution to complex problems. That is, at the early stage of the research project course, the majority of participants in this study thought that undergraduates' life was unrelated to research involvement:

"Research is conducted in order to advance knowledge in your academic field, such as medical sciences. I think publication of journal article and conference presentation can be central to research activity." (S10, Group 3, Week 2, 2014)

"For me, research means discovery of what nobody knows or invention of new devices. I haven't conducted research before, so it's just my impression, but I research works would be achieved by the limited great figures, experts, in academic fields." (S12, Group 3, Week 2, 2014)

Students' perceptions of research in final week (tenth or fifth week)

Data analysis of the second (post) interview showed their increased attention to research processes, including autonomy, collaborative working and knowledge construction processes. Furthermore, through participation in research project, they realised that research has something to do with learning process in their own context of studying at the medical school. That is, their perceptions of research were related to experiment, solitude and exhaustive work in Week 2, whereas they could view research as social and cognitive processes of daily activity in the final week. Table 2 provides a summary of their perceptions of research in the final week.

As shown in Table 2 , students recognised the linkage of research and learning through participation in research project. In Week 2, they perceived research and learning as separate activities. Specifically, research was viewed as an irrelevant activity to undergraduates' life and also as an activity which was undertaken only by someone who pursues an academic career. However, they began to relate the process of research to their learning experiences during the course. S2 said:

"Recently, I gradually became aware that the processes of learning might be similar to those of research. Like, it includes investigation of what I want to know, information gathering necessary to the goals, and a study meeting with my friends outside classroom. I think what I did in our research project was exactly congruent to the process of learning." (S2, Group 1, Final week, 2013)

In addition to students' awareness of linkage between learning and research processes, research could be viewed as process of inquiry by them in the final week. Students said that researcher autonomy or inquiring mind is a core concept of research. S11 emphasised the importance of inquiring mind in doing research:

"Research is a process of approaching to the truth, which is driven by your inquiring mind. For example, we researched students' perceptions of career choice as medical doctor and family, umm, sharing housework with partner. People's perceptions vary according to their background, and we couldn't draw one definite conclusion from data. However, I really enjoyed working in this process, and my inquiring mind made me participate more actively in the research project." (S11, Group 3, Final week, 2014)

S2 said that researcher’s autonomy during the research process is important for inquiry. Moreover, he noticed that research could be seen as not a special activity of scientist but a daily activity of people.

"Investigating on your own initiative is pivotal to conducting a research project. So, research is to investigate what I want to know on my initiative. In the first interview, I said I had no idea about research, but now I feel research can include not only scientists' work but also our daily activity of learning." (S2, Group 1, Final week, 2013)

As students in this study were engaged in research work as a group, some participants viewed research from a social, interpersonal perspective. In the first interview, research was seen as scientist's lonely activity, whereas students mentioned in the second interview that research was collaborative work. S3 said:

"All group members needed collaboratively work to find out our own way to attain the shared goal of the research project. It is important for each member to actively make contribution to the research project. I needed to understand how I could contribute to group work, like my own role in this group. Before I participated in this course, I thought research should be done alone, but now I realize that research also includes group work, and collaborative work with members is really essential to the research project." (S3, Group1; Final week 2013)

From a cognitive perspective, research was viewed as a knowledge construction process by them in the final week. S14 said:

"I could realise that research includes the processes of integrating a variety of data into the meaning, and presenting the findings to people. It was very difficult to answer our research questions based on such an extensive data obtained from interview and questionnaire survey and we struggled to interpret those data, but I noticed that this process of thinking was research." (S14, Group 3, Final week, 2014)

Therefore, analysis of interview data shows that students' perceptions of research have changed qualitatively through experience in conducting research.

Relationship between perceptions of research and approaches to learning

Deep approach to learning.

Students who could have a process-oriented perception of research took a qualitatively deeper approach to learning during the course. Five themes regarding deep approach to learning emerged from the analysis of interview data: inquiring mind, synthesis of knowledge, active participation, collaborative learning and reflective learning.

Firstly, their inquiring mind intrinsically motivated their engagement with the research. As S4 mentioned, he did not feel that he was forced to do the research project by someone in a mandatory course. Such motivation has led to their deep approaches to learning.

"I have a research stance that seeks what I want to know for its own sake. Now, I'm not reluctantly doing research under someone's instruction. Rather, with tutor's advices, I'm carrying out the research on my own initiative, umm, pursue what I want to know for my own sake." (S4, Group1; Final week 2013)

"I want to do further investigation by interviewing with the students which can be useful for a deeper analysis of PBL. I felt only questionnaire was not enough to better understand their attitudes toward PBL." (S7, Group 2; Final week 2013)

Secondly, students expressed synthesis of knowledge which is a more complex cognitive process in Bloom's taxonomy. 27 For instance, S11 fully enjoyed drawing a conclusion from a large amount of data. S11's comments implied that interpretation of the phenomenon involved comparison, integration and categorisation of data:

"I felt really interesting in interpreting the common or different ideas on family and career planning among male and female medical students from extensive data obtained through interviews and questionnaire survey. Apparently, I supposed that those data were not interrelated, but, in fact, I realized that there was a story on what human being is behind the data." (S11, Group 3, Final week, 2014)

Thirdly, in transition from direct instructional context to student-centred learning context, necessity of active learning was strongly acknowledged by them. In doing research project, students needed to collect and analyse data on their own initiative in order to investigate what they want to know. S4 said:

"I've got used to obtaining knowledge by listening to teachers since I was a child. It was a kind of first time to work out a plan for the research project by ourselves. I realised the importance of actively study something in my career as a medical doctor through research design, data collection and analysis in the course." (S4, Group1, Final week, 2013)

Fourthly, in the context of collaborative work, the importance of teamwork was also emphasised. Although S3 felt it difficult to make contribution to the group work, she realised that sharing her opinions can be essential to elaboration of research planning and data analysis in group.

"Through research, I realised the importance of expressing my opinion explicitly. At the beginning, I hesitated to do it, because I worried if my opinion would be off the point in the group discussion, but now I can say any opinions can contribute to the research work, which can be also related to teamwork." (S3, Group 1, Final week, 2013)

Lastly, each student continuously reflected on the progress of their research work, their underlying belief on research and areas of improvement in order to attain the shared goals. For instance, S5 attempted to better understand the nature of qualitative research during this course, and he noticed that this reflective process actually led to his meaningful learning.

"During the research project, I was always thinking of what qualitative research is and how I could qualitatively analyse data obtained. This kind of reflection on what I did and repeatedly thinking of qualitative research connected to meaningful learning. Although I couldn't find out the exact answer during this course, this was a good experience for me." (S7, Group 2, Final week, 2013)

S1 tried to improve the consistency of their work through reflection on the research purposes which were discussed at the early stage. S1 acknowledged the importance of reflection in doing research:

"It was very important to take the consistency of the research into account. Don't forget what we originally wanted to know and clarify. When I was stuck with research planning and data analysis, I always reflected on what we discussed with respect to research questions in Week 1." (S1, Group 1; Final week, 2013)

Strategic approach to learning

Students who had only a content-oriented perception of research tended to take a strategic approach to learning, which aims to earn the (highest possible) grades of the course, such as well organised study methods and effective time management. 23 However, there was a slight change from surface-strategic to deep-strategic approaches. For instance, at the early stage of research project, S6 attempted to manage what he needed to do in his group by minimal effort and only followed tutors' suggestions. S6 stated:

"I felt my ideas were not insightful, and I couldn't effectively make contribution to the group work. That's why I focused on just listening to others and following others' suggestions, which was the most efficient way of completing the task." (S6, Group 2; Week 2, 2013)

His main focus was on finding an efficient way of completing the task in this course. He did not build knowledge through active interaction with members but keep quiet to avoid interrupting others’ discussions. However, as he experienced a group situation where others were stuck and there was frequent silence during research planning, his approach to research project appeared to change to a deep-strategic approach. S6 stated:

"I started to think that I had to share my opinions in our group, otherwise we couldn't finish this project on time.

When they were completely stuck in the meeting, I strongly felt that I needed to do something. Once I made contribution in the discussion, I started to enjoy participating in this project." (S6, Group 2; Final week, 2013)

Although his main aim was to complete the task and to obtain safe grade in this research course, he could take a leadership in the group and share his opinions more actively.

Factors affecting students' engagement with undergraduate research

This study identified four main inclusive factors which led to the Japanese medical students in this study expressing practical difficulties in the course:

• Prior learning experience
• Values towards interpersonal communication
• Understanding of research process
• Social relationships with tutors and peers

The first factor is their prior learning experiences. Students identified a gap in the instructional approaches between their prior learning experiences and undergraduate research. In Week 2, most students regarded learning as an activity where students are taught by a teacher's highly structured direction and provision of knowledge. On the other hand, undergraduate research is a more open-ended, inductive and student-centred activity. They appeared to struggle to work out the research project due to this pedagogical gap. S2 said:

"There isn't a clear answer in advance, and no one will give an answer in doing research project. We have to build up hypothesis, and to verify it, we need to collect relevant data, and then analyse them in depth. So, research is totally different from learning. It puzzled me what to do in this research project." (S2, Group 1; Week 2, 2013)

The second factor is their values of interpersonal communication. Although students acknowledged that active participation was essential to their research project work, they tended to hesitate in active self-expression in the group. The major source of their reticence was not their fear of making mistakes itself, but an anxiety of whether they would disturb the collective work. For instance, since S6 highly valued intelligible explanation, he could rarely give uncertain information in the group. S6 said:

"I'm a poor talker by nature, and I don't want to bother others by sharing my uncertain idea. When I was not fully confident, I tended to hesitate to make contribution to the discussions." (S6, Group 2; Week 2, 2013)

The third factor is an understanding of research process. Practical difficulties during the research process include information searching, literature review, data collection and analysis. It was hard for them to obtain a clear image of what research is and what to do next during the course. S7 commented:

This was the first time to conduct qualitative research, so we couldn't even imagine what it is, and I didn't know what to do next in the research process. If we had to carry out research project by ourselves, I had no idea, like what I should do. (S7, Group 2, Final week, 2013)

The fourth factor is social relationships with tutors and peers. They sometimes felt that their participation was restricted by tutors' presence and instruction. S11 said:

"I think tutors had a strong presence. I know a tutor's opinion can be better than ours. I wasn't confident enough to express a thoughtful opinion in group discussions. So, sometimes I waited for tutor's suggestions rather than sharing my idea." (S11, Group 3, Week 2, 2014)

Furthermore, some students found it difficult to identify their own role in the group. For instance, S1 who was a more experienced member struggled to find a way to effectively contribute to the group work. S1 said:

"I have to find a suitable position in the group. It was difficult to identify my own role in this group. I felt other members were getting more independent, not relying on me. So, I need to think about how I can contribute to this group." (S1, Group 1, Week 2, 2013)

This interview excerpt shows that identity formation as a member is a key element of students' research activity, particularly in a collaborative learning context.

This study has drawn on phenomenography as research methodology to explore students' experiences in undergraduate research from the lens of study participants. Specifically, the focus of this study was on examining how research experiences informed students' perceptions of research and approaches to learning. Whilst all students were originally identified as aligning to a 'content-oriented' approach to studying, by the final week of the research project, ten out of 14 students in this study changed perceptions of research to a process-oriented view. By tracing changes in perception over time, data analysis revealed that, through participation in research project, their approaches to learning became qualitatively deeper, (-an inquiring mind, synthesis of knowledge, active participation, collaborative learning and reflective learning). Although four students' perceptions of research remained content-oriented, their strategic approaches to learning were also qualitatively changed. Although students took different approaches to learning in the undergraduate research, this study fully described the processes of changes in their perceptions of research and approaches to learning.

This study found that students' perceptions of research were (re-)formed through their actual research experiences, and these epistemological changes led to the adoption of deep approaches to learning in this course. The findings concurred with the previous studies which specified the key learning outcomes related to research skills. 28 , 29 Specifically, two types of learning outcomes would be expected in research-based education. 28

The first type is professional skills learning outcome which includes management of resources and time, self-directed learning, and communication skills. Students in this study could regard research as an activity with inquiring mind and mutual engagement within the context of "Research Experience" course. Thus, a given context, perception, and approaches to learning are reciprocally related. 23

The second type is research skills learning outcome which includes critical appraisal and synthesis of evidence, formulating a research question and study design, data analysis and management. 28 - 30 This learning outcome is fundamental not only to pursuing a research career but also to the routine practice and scholarly activity of all clinical professionals. Therefore, introduction of research-based education into the early undergraduate curriculum allows medical students to cultivate both research-specific skills and transferable skills, which are basically necessary for continuing professional development. 31 The corroboration of this phenomenological study's findings with those from prior studies on undergraduate research in medical education indicate that collaborative research-based education should be implemented at the level of medical undergraduate curriculum as an essential springboard for becoming a medical professional. Findings from this study also demonstrate that students' awareness of the links between research and learning is an important outcome in undergraduate research. 32 Through the research experience, students in this study could identify the vital link between research and learning. For instance, S2 mentioned in a final reflection that " I feel research can include not only scientists' work but also our daily activity of learning ". As development of research skills is seen as an underlying principle in all education, learning through research is also pivotal to health professional development. 13 , 28 Specifically, the inductive process of inquiry is closely connected with the principle of lifelong learning, clinical reasoning and EBM approach. 10 Thus, research activity as an educational practice provides undergraduates with an opportunity not only to understand how the research process can contribute to the advancement of knowledge but also to enhance their research skills and active learning.

Research activity promotes students' active and reflective learning. In this study, some students were regularly reflecting on the progress of their research project and their own contributions to collective learning. Branch and Paranjape stated that "reflection leads to growth of the individual-morally, personally, psychologically, and emotionally, as well as cognitively". 33 Learning journals and feedback are effective ways to further enhance their reflective learning in undergraduate research. In particular, provision of feedback from tutors is essential for promoting students' deep approach to learning.

Learners' cultural assumptions in relation to a collective activity are considered one of the elements that shape new learning process. 34 , 35 In this study, students' values towards interpersonal communication were highly influential in their research experiences. Students addressed some difficulties in self-expression during the discussions, for instance, S6 said that "I don't want to bother others by sharing my uncertain idea" . Such a tendency came from not only their limited experience of student-initiated learning but also their values that prioritise a collective activity. However, as they recognised the importance of active self-expression in the group, the influence of their cultural assumptions gradually diminished. Medical educators need to understand that learning is shaped through students' ongoing participation, and they can adapt to the new learning context. Therefore, Japanese students, like other Asian students, cannot simply be categorised into a stable perception of quiet, passive and dependent learners.  Exploring the process of individuals' participation allows for better understanding variation in their ways of knowing, doing and being a member in a context of student-centred classroom.

An important aspect of facilitating students' active participation in research lies in keeping a balance between tutors' intervention and students' autonomy at each step of the research process. 5 , 36 This study found that as the relationships between tutors and students in undergraduate research were socially dynamic, the roles of tutor needed to be defined according to students' prior research/learning experiences, the quality of research questions set by the students, and difficulties encountered during the research process. 4 - 7 A better understanding of cultural, social or experiential factors that affect students' research activities are, thus, critical for enhancement of their active learning through undergraduate research.

Medical education studies in undergraduate research to date have tended to focus on students' perceptions of research and curriculum descriptions of research-based education. This phenomenographic study revealed qualitative changes in students' perceptions of research and approaches to learning over time through observation of and reflection on their on-going participation in the research project. Although the sample size appeared to be relatively small, these findings could provide insights into the potential for undergraduate research in health professions education, which can further enhance students' deeper approach to learning and cultivate their basic skills necessary to continuing professional development. Furthermore, this evidence in this study can be a springboard for making more elaborative exploration of students' learning process in undergraduate research.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the students who participated, and shared their experiences with us.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Research Paper Reflection

In the research paper, I can feel my biggest change is in dealing with the structure of the whole article. The structure of the essay is already mentioned in the introduction part, so the next step is to follow the structure I have made. In other words, each part, as well as each title of paragraphs of the essay should take concerted action with the structure and the development in the the introduction. Otherwise, the introduction part will lost its function. As for my thinking aspect, the most important thing is to organize and get idea fragments in order in my mind. And now I will follow the principle of thinking first and writing second. After dividing the whole structure into some main parts, some smaller structures in each part should also be divided further. In my revision process, because of huge number of words, I firstly made a plan for the overall structure, and then for the words, finally for the content. Therefore, after finishing this essay, I have learned that breaking up the goal is very important. When the big goal becomes into small, it will be much easier.

Reflections on the Research Process

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Every research process is saturated with methodological reflections, trials and tribulations and ultimately—decisions. In this chapter, the author delves into the challenges and choices that structured the research behind this book: what to look for, where to look for it, how to produce and process qualitative data, and how to distil new knowledge and new theory through analysis. By combining Grounded Theory Method (GTM), personal sensitizing concepts, situational mapping and analysis, and multi-sited fieldwork, this chapter gives a unique and intimate insight into the research process of qualitatively oriented geography.

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• Ethical Considerations in Research | Types & Examples

Ethical Considerations in Research | Types & Examples

Published on October 18, 2021 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on May 9, 2024.

Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide your research designs and practices. Scientists and researchers must always adhere to a certain code of conduct when collecting data from people.

The goals of human research often include understanding real-life phenomena, studying effective treatments, investigating behaviors, and improving lives in other ways. What you decide to research and how you conduct that research involve key ethical considerations.

These considerations work to

• protect the rights of research participants
• enhance research validity
• maintain scientific or academic integrity

Table of contents

Why do research ethics matter, getting ethical approval for your study, types of ethical issues, voluntary participation, informed consent, confidentiality, potential for harm, results communication, examples of ethical failures, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research ethics.

Research ethics matter for scientific integrity, human rights and dignity, and collaboration between science and society. These principles make sure that participation in studies is voluntary, informed, and safe for research subjects.

You’ll balance pursuing important research objectives with using ethical research methods and procedures. It’s always necessary to prevent permanent or excessive harm to participants, whether inadvertent or not.

Defying research ethics will also lower the credibility of your research because it’s hard for others to trust your data if your methods are morally questionable.

Even if a research idea is valuable to society, it doesn’t justify violating the human rights or dignity of your study participants.

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Before you start any study involving data collection with people, you’ll submit your research proposal to an institutional review board (IRB) .

An IRB is a committee that checks whether your research aims and research design are ethically acceptable and follow your institution’s code of conduct. They check that your research materials and procedures are up to code.

If successful, you’ll receive IRB approval, and you can begin collecting data according to the approved procedures. If you want to make any changes to your procedures or materials, you’ll need to submit a modification application to the IRB for approval.

If unsuccessful, you may be asked to re-submit with modifications or your research proposal may receive a rejection. To get IRB approval, it’s important to explicitly note how you’ll tackle each of the ethical issues that may arise in your study.

There are several ethical issues you should always pay attention to in your research design, and these issues can overlap with each other.

You’ll usually outline ways you’ll deal with each issue in your research proposal if you plan to collect data from participants.

Voluntary participation means that all research subjects are free to choose to participate without any pressure or coercion.

All participants are able to withdraw from, or leave, the study at any point without feeling an obligation to continue. Your participants don’t need to provide a reason for leaving the study.

It’s important to make it clear to participants that there are no negative consequences or repercussions to their refusal to participate. After all, they’re taking the time to help you in the research process , so you should respect their decisions without trying to change their minds.

Voluntary participation is an ethical principle protected by international law and many scientific codes of conduct.

Take special care to ensure there’s no pressure on participants when you’re working with vulnerable groups of people who may find it hard to stop the study even when they want to.

Informed consent refers to a situation in which all potential participants receive and understand all the information they need to decide whether they want to participate. This includes information about the study’s benefits, risks, funding, and institutional approval.

You make sure to provide all potential participants with all the relevant information about

• what the study is about
• the risks and benefits of taking part
• how long the study will take
• your supervisor’s contact information and the institution’s approval number

Usually, you’ll provide participants with a text for them to read and ask them if they have any questions. If they agree to participate, they can sign or initial the consent form. Note that this may not be sufficient for informed consent when you work with particularly vulnerable groups of people.

If you’re collecting data from people with low literacy, make sure to verbally explain the consent form to them before they agree to participate.

For participants with very limited English proficiency, you should always translate the study materials or work with an interpreter so they have all the information in their first language.

In research with children, you’ll often need informed permission for their participation from their parents or guardians. Although children cannot give informed consent, it’s best to also ask for their assent (agreement) to participate, depending on their age and maturity level.

Anonymity means that you don’t know who the participants are and you can’t link any individual participant to their data.

You can only guarantee anonymity by not collecting any personally identifying information—for example, names, phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, physical characteristics, photos, and videos.

In many cases, it may be impossible to truly anonymize data collection . For example, data collected in person or by phone cannot be considered fully anonymous because some personal identifiers (demographic information or phone numbers) are impossible to hide.

You’ll also need to collect some identifying information if you give your participants the option to withdraw their data at a later stage.

Data pseudonymization is an alternative method where you replace identifying information about participants with pseudonymous, or fake, identifiers. The data can still be linked to participants but it’s harder to do so because you separate personal information from the study data.

Confidentiality means that you know who the participants are, but you remove all identifying information from your report.

All participants have a right to privacy, so you should protect their personal data for as long as you store or use it. Even when you can’t collect data anonymously, you should secure confidentiality whenever you can.

Some research designs aren’t conducive to confidentiality, but it’s important to make all attempts and inform participants of the risks involved.

As a researcher, you have to consider all possible sources of harm to participants. Harm can come in many different forms.

• Psychological harm: Sensitive questions or tasks may trigger negative emotions such as shame or anxiety.
• Social harm: Participation can involve social risks, public embarrassment, or stigma.
• Physical harm: Pain or injury can result from the study procedures.
• Legal harm: Reporting sensitive data could lead to legal risks or a breach of privacy.

It’s best to consider every possible source of harm in your study as well as concrete ways to mitigate them. Involve your supervisor to discuss steps for harm reduction.

Make sure to disclose all possible risks of harm to participants before the study to get informed consent. If there is a risk of harm, prepare to provide participants with resources or counseling or medical services if needed.

Some of these questions may bring up negative emotions, so you inform participants about the sensitive nature of the survey and assure them that their responses will be confidential.

The way you communicate your research results can sometimes involve ethical issues. Good science communication is honest, reliable, and credible. It’s best to make your results as transparent as possible.

Take steps to actively avoid plagiarism and research misconduct wherever possible.

Plagiarism means submitting others’ works as your own. Although it can be unintentional, copying someone else’s work without proper credit amounts to stealing. It’s an ethical problem in research communication because you may benefit by harming other researchers.

Self-plagiarism is when you republish or re-submit parts of your own papers or reports without properly citing your original work.

This is problematic because you may benefit from presenting your ideas as new and original even though they’ve already been published elsewhere in the past. You may also be infringing on your previous publisher’s copyright, violating an ethical code, or wasting time and resources by doing so.

In extreme cases of self-plagiarism, entire datasets or papers are sometimes duplicated. These are major ethical violations because they can skew research findings if taken as original data.

You notice that two published studies have similar characteristics even though they are from different years. Their sample sizes, locations, treatments, and results are highly similar, and the studies share one author in common.

Research misconduct

Research misconduct means making up or falsifying data, manipulating data analyses, or misrepresenting results in research reports. It’s a form of academic fraud.

These actions are committed intentionally and can have serious consequences; research misconduct is not a simple mistake or a point of disagreement about data analyses.

Research misconduct is a serious ethical issue because it can undermine academic integrity and institutional credibility. It leads to a waste of funding and resources that could have been used for alternative research.

Later investigations revealed that they fabricated and manipulated their data to show a nonexistent link between vaccines and autism. Wakefield also neglected to disclose important conflicts of interest, and his medical license was taken away.

This fraudulent work sparked vaccine hesitancy among parents and caregivers. The rate of MMR vaccinations in children fell sharply, and measles outbreaks became more common due to a lack of herd immunity.

Research scandals with ethical failures are littered throughout history, but some took place not that long ago.

Some scientists in positions of power have historically mistreated or even abused research participants to investigate research problems at any cost. These participants were prisoners, under their care, or otherwise trusted them to treat them with dignity.

To demonstrate the importance of research ethics, we’ll briefly review two research studies that violated human rights in modern history.

These experiments were inhumane and resulted in trauma, permanent disabilities, or death in many cases.

After some Nazi doctors were put on trial for their crimes, the Nuremberg Code of research ethics for human experimentation was developed in 1947 to establish a new standard for human experimentation in medical research.

In reality, the actual goal was to study the effects of the disease when left untreated, and the researchers never informed participants about their diagnoses or the research aims.

Although participants experienced severe health problems, including blindness and other complications, the researchers only pretended to provide medical care.

When treatment became possible in 1943, 11 years after the study began, none of the participants were offered it, despite their health conditions and high risk of death.

Ethical failures like these resulted in severe harm to participants, wasted resources, and lower trust in science and scientists. This is why all research institutions have strict ethical guidelines for performing research.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Measures of central tendency
• Chi square tests
• Confidence interval
• Quartiles & Quantiles
• Cluster sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Thematic analysis
• Cohort study
• Peer review
• Ethnography

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Conformity bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Availability heuristic
• Attrition bias
• Social desirability bias

Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide your research designs and practices. These principles include voluntary participation, informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality, potential for harm, and results communication.

Scientists and researchers must always adhere to a certain code of conduct when collecting data from others .

These considerations protect the rights of research participants, enhance research validity , and maintain scientific integrity.

Research ethics matter for scientific integrity, human rights and dignity, and collaboration between science and society. These principles make sure that participation in studies is voluntary, informed, and safe.

Anonymity means you don’t know who the participants are, while confidentiality means you know who they are but remove identifying information from your research report. Both are important ethical considerations .

You can only guarantee anonymity by not collecting any personally identifying information—for example, names, phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, physical characteristics, photos, or videos.

You can keep data confidential by using aggregate information in your research report, so that you only refer to groups of participants rather than individuals.

These actions are committed intentionally and can have serious consequences; research misconduct is not a simple mistake or a point of disagreement but a serious ethical failure.

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A Personal Reflection on Doing Participatory Action Research in Transformative Justice

by Melanie Brazzell

What really makes us safe? Logo from Seattle-based artist & organizer Andrea Marcos (https://www.dreamarcos.com/)

We managed to slip in the “Thinking Gender 2020” conference on transformative justice just before shelter-in-place orders came down in California. Since then, the pandemic has brought on painful new conditions for comrades and colleagues scrambling to adapt. But I have been heartened to see mutual aid take center stage. Suddenly, this form of political labor, at door stoops and on sofa cushions, was getting its limelight. Suddenly, this queer-crip-Black-and-brown-femme-trans-and-more alternative world and institution-building for purposes of surviving and thriving was no longer an add-on to the ‘real’ work (read: white, male) of changing or seizing state power. Rather, it was understood as our core purpose: to sustain ourselves and each other by any means necessary, as “revolutionary mothering” (Gumbs, Martens, and Williams 2016). This has felt like a small win in a sea of crisis, to have kitchen-table care revealed as the invisibilized bedrock of all social change work.

Transformative justice (TJ) and community accountability work is mutual aid (“Mutual Aid Justice: Beyond Survival” 2020; Bierria 2020), existing within a broader movement ecology in a complementary relationship to abolitionist campaigns to take, transform, and curb state power. But when TJ is done within social movements, it often feels like undervalued ‘service work’ to the movement: done by those deemed most disposable, on issues often deemed irrelevant, like partner and sexual violence. To see mutual aid recognized is to see these ‘essential workers’ and essential issues centered.

As a TJ practitioner, it’s disabled people, Black and brown folks, women, queers, trans people, and non-binary femmes who have taught me how to build the muscles to do this work. My research on transformative justice grew out of my own engagement as a survivor in anti-violence work. Visionary boss and mentor Maura Bairley (now of Move to End Violence) first put INCITE!’s work on my desk when I worked for her violence prevention office in college. After graduating, I moved to Berlin, Germany, which seemed like a fitting place to think about community accountability in the context of historical trauma. What I expected to be a short stint in the squats, people’s kitchens, collectives, and Freiräume (free spaces), became a decade honing skills in scaffolding utopian alternative institutions. This included cofounding the Berlin Transformative Justice Kollektiv , which translated (both literally and figuratively) U.S. critiques of and alternatives to the carceral state into the German context and hybridized them with local traditions of resistance to state and gendered violence. The collective held conversations with U.S. activists hoping the ‘mothership’ had answers—apparently an ‘urban myth’ widely shared in the early years of transformative justice activism, according to Shannon Perez-Darby, (Perez-Darby 2019).

These conversations snowballed into a Master’s research project. Studying with critical theorists in the anti-fascist Frankfurt School tradition, and inspired by Alisa Bierria’s approach to philosophy, I focused on how transformative justice and community accountability activists theorize new concepts of responsibility through their praxis. Because what I had learned burst the seams of the pages allotted for my thesis, I created a website to amplify the voices of the activists and scholars I interviewed, archive their stories, and share my findings. This was also an effort to engage in participatory and community-accountable scholarship, theorizing together with and for other TJ activists.

Part of coming into honest relationship with transformative justice was reckoning with my identity as a white person working in a genealogy rooted in Black radical, queer/trans, and women of color feminist traditions. Keeping my eyes strained across the Atlantic and oriented to the U.S. kept me from seeing my own role in my community. I offered a seminar at my university on “Feminism and the State: Carceral Feminisms and Transformative Alternatives,” and invited a number of Berlin activists to guest lecture in the course. The class was book-ended by the mass sexual violence in Cologne’s main square on New Year Eve’s of 2015 and, in summer, the passage of carceral feminist laws regarding prostitution and sexual assault. This made it clearer than ever that carceral feminist dynamics were transnational and alive and well in Germany. Together with several students, we organized a public panel with our guest lecturers. This evolved into a toolkit for analyzing state violence, its interactions with gendered violence (particularly for migrant and refugee women), and roots and seeds of TJ in the German context. These interventions were followed by additional events, articles, and books, all now housed within the “What really makes us safe?” project .

After a decade of what felt like practice runs in living “otherwise,” I wanted to root more firmly and decided to exercise a privilege most immigrants rarely have: to return home. Trump was elected a month before my move. The safety of the social welfare system in Germany was seductive, but I felt committed to going back to the place (and the systems of violence) that had made me, in order to face and fight them. Ending up in graduate school seemed counterintuitive—if I wanted to fight, why go study? But, at UC Santa Barbara I found life rafts of radical scholar-activism. I had the opportunity to join Hahrie Han’s p3 lab, which taught me to study social movement organizations meticulously from the inside out. Professor Zakiya Luna’s social movements workshop, and her expertise on methodology and Black and women of color feminism, have supported me as I leap into fieldwork. And my dissertation is overseen by Avery Gordon, longtime member of Critical Resistance, and George Lipsitz, scholar-activist extraordinaire.

The “What really makes us safe?” project continues to house my work as I expand my research for my dissertation. Shifting from philosophy to sociology, I focus more on lived praxis and the movement histories of transformative justice. I’m particularly interested in the contradictions of the carceral state when it comes to gender: how did gender-based violence come to be an alibi for the expansion of mass incarceration, even as that expansion contributes to and exacerbates gender-based violence? From a social movement research perspective, I’m curious how the feminist anti-violence movement became co-opted into a conservative, racialized law-and-order politics (Kim 2014; Richie 2012; Gottschalk 2006). I’m also looking at who resisted the co-optation by remaining anti-carceral and intersectional, as Emily Thuma documents in her book All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence (2019). ) As we come upon the 20 th anniversary of INCITE! and Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA), narrating and archiving this history is important in order to understand how transformative justice has (re)vitalized radical anti-violence practices.

Many stories of transformative justice and community accountability are unwritten, since they take place as mutual aid done in self-organized spaces or at the margins of organizations. Researchers can play a role in documenting these learnings. The mentorship of Alisa Bierra and Emily Thuma, members of CARA back in the day, has blossomed into a partnership to help build the CARA archives, where interviews for my dissertation will also serve as oral histories.

I’m also looking transnationally, to bridge my knowledge of transformative justice in different nation-state contexts. Erica Meiners and I organized a roundtable with TJ practitioners from the UK, Germany, Australia, and the U.S. Together with some of those participants, we’re working to decolonize the conversation and engage with global South practitioners of, what we call, transformative justice (and they may call something else), by organizing an event in conjunction with the AWID Forum in Taipei.

And the fight came home to me, even while studying, in that University of California graduate students started a wave of wildcat strikes over the past academic year that were in full bloom during the “Thinking Gender” conference. The support of conference organizers for the strike made it possible for me to participate without crossing the picket line. I drew on all my learnings about inside-outside strategy—building the alternative worlds/organizations/institutions we need, even as we push to change broken systems from the inside—when I seeded and launched a new project, Strike University , with a crew from across the UCs. As an effort to decolonize, democratize, queer, and abolish the university as we know it, Strike U serves as a people’s university, a think tank for the UC wildcat movement, and a training school for a new generation of university labor activists. The relationships with other social movement scholars I’d built at UC Santa Barbara allowed me to translate our alignments on theory into alignments on practice, and move into shared action. We founded the “Wildcat Organizer School” department of Strike U, where we are currently training an intercampus cohort with a 6-week curriculum on organizing skills. People talk about building where you are and going to get your cousins, but it can take a while to find where we belong, and to feel supported enough to fight for that place, and for everyone’s belonging and sustenance there.

So, it was a small miracle to get the “Thinking Gender” conference in before this pandemic turn, since the UCLA Center for the Study of Women is one of the only established academic spaces I’ve found that has built entire streams around studying and practicing abolitionist feminism and transformative justice. When my panel mate Ayanna De’Vante Spencer referred to herself clearly and proudly as a “survivor scholar,” I was moved—she had created an academic space I had never before experienced, where that was a truth we could now claim. Academics have always been “curious” about my work; it wasn’t until “Thinking Gender,” and meeting the networks of people around it, that I felt it could have an academic home, could be mothered.

Video of Melanie Brazzell’s Thinking Gender 2020 paper presentation is available on CSW’s YouTube channel.

Works Cited

Bierria, Alisa. 2020. Black Agenda Report Abolition & Mutual Aid Spotlight: Alisa Bierria Interview by Dean Spade and Roberto Sirvent.  https://www.blackagendareport.com/bar-abolition-mutual-aid-spotlight-alisa-bierria .

Gottschalk, Marie. 2006.  The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Gumbs, Alexis Pauline, China Martens, and Mai’a Williams. 2016.  Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines . PM Press.

Kim, Mimi Eunmi. 2014. “Dancing the Carceral Creep: The Anti-Domestic Violence Movement and the Paradoxical Pursuit of Criminalization, 1973 – 1986.” Dissertation. Berkeley, CA.

“Mutual Aid Justice: Beyond Survival.” 2020.  The Laura Flanders Show.  YouTube, KCET/LINKtv, Free Speech TV.  https://lauraflanders.org/2020/04/mutual-aid-justice-beyond-survival/ .

Perez-Darby, Shannon. 2019. “What Is Accountability?” Panel presented at the Building Accountable Communities: A National Gathering on Transforming Harm, Barnard College, New York, NY, April 27.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjRbj57vBvA .

Richie, Beth E. 2012.  Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation . New York: New York University Press.

Thuma, Emily L. 2019.  All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence . Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.  https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/68zcs2nd9780252042331.html .

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The High Cost of Misaligned Business and Analytics Goals

• Preethika Sainam,
• Seigyoung Auh,
• Richard Ettenson,
• Bulent Menguc

Findings from research on more than 300 companies undergoing data and analytics transformations.

How and where do companies’ investments in new and improved data and analytic capabilities contribute to tangible business benefits like profitability and growth? Should they invest in talent? Technology? Culture? According to new research, the degree of alignment between business goals and analytics capabilities is among the most important factors. While companies that are early in their analytics journey will see value creation even with significant internal misalignment, at higher levels of data maturity aligned companies find that analytics capabilities create significantly more value across growth, financial, and customer KPIs.

Business leaders are feeling acute pressure to ramp up their company’s data and analytics capabilities — and fast — or risk falling behind more data-savvy competitors. If only the path to success were that straightforward! In our previous research, we found that capitalizing on data and analytics requires creating a data culture, obtaining senior leadership commitment, acquiring data and analytics skills and competencies, as well as empowering employees. And each of these dimensions is necessary just to start the analytics journey.

• PS Preethika Sainam is an Assistant Professor of Global Marketing at Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University.
• SA Seigyoung Auh is Professor of Global Marketing at Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University, and Research Faculty at the Center for Services Leadership at the WP Carey School of Business, Arizona State University.
• RE Richard Ettenson is Professor and Keickhefer Fellow in Global Marketing and Brand Strategy, The Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University .
• BM Bulent Menguc is a Professor of Marketing at the Leeds University Business School in the U.K.

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Election Season 2024: Do Your Research Before You Vote

Tricia Lauer

It’s voting season again, and many people wonder how they can properly research to ensure they know who to vote for. That can be the age-old question in relation to voting. Let’s take a deeper dive into voting research, particularly for those interested in ensuring they are keeping human rights in mind.

When looking at a sample ballot, what is the first thing that you review? We strongly suggest that you research the candidates first, and make sure to review each candidate’s position on legislative measures. So, let’s start there.

While legislative measures may not appear on your ballot, a candidate’s position can absolutely help you identify if a candidate is someone you want to support – what legislation did they vote for or oppose, and how does that line up with your own personal ethics or political thoughts?

Depending on what you want to learn about a particular candidate on the ballot, there are several different types of resources you can search:

LGBTQ+ Victory Fund : This organization supports LGBTQ+ candidates at all levels of the government. They offer a candidate search feature so you can learn more.

Legal Defense Fund : This organization provides details on how to research candidates and positions they have taken previously in their careers. Be sure to review their “More Voter Resources” section for additional options.

Human Rights Campaign (HRC) : The organization has been an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights since 1980, and several years ago they developed a way for people to review laws and concerns in every US state. On their page, there are details relating to state and local policies, equality rights specifically, and elections as a whole.

Legislative measures can be more difficult to research and review, because they can vary widely from one jurisdiction to another. Here are some ways that you can be informed about state and local legislation.

In 2023, the HRC issued a state of emergency for the LGBTQ+ community relating to an unprecedented wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. This prompted the foundation to create several resources and initiatives including the Count Us In pledge , of which TriNet is a proud participant . Learn more in TriNet’s 2023 Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) Report and related blog, Supporting LGBTQ+ Employees in an Evolving Legal Landscape .

Another major initiative by the HRC is their State Equality Index (SEI) . The HRC SEI provides insight for all 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., in certain areas of law and assigns the states to one of four distinct categories:

High priority to achieve basic equality

Building equality

Solidifying equality

Working toward innovative equality

You can review the state where you live to identify any areas of concern as well as positive actions taken statewide. This can help you pinpoint specific issues to focus on.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has also developed a tracking system for anti-LGBTQ+ bills proposed in 2024. Using their interactive map and database, you can review laws by state, issue or status. This tracker also includes useful details on who voted for the laws, which may provide helpful insight about state or local candidates running for reelection.

Now more than ever, it’s important to remember that your vote absolutely does count! Research and make the decision that is best for you and your ethics, and definitely get down to the polls and VOTE!

© 2024 TriNet Group, Inc. All rights reserved. This communication is for informational purposes only, is not legal, tax or accounting advice, and is not an offer to sell, buy or procure insurance. TriNet is the single-employer sponsor of all its benefit plans, which does not include voluntary benefits that are not ERISA-covered group health insurance plans and enrollment is voluntary. Official plan documents always control and TriNet reserves the right to amend the benefit plans or change the offerings and deadlines. 

This post may contain hyperlinks to websites operated by parties other than TriNet. Such hyperlinks are provided for reference only. TriNet does not control such web sites and is not responsible for their content. Inclusion of such hyperlinks on TriNet.com does not necessarily imply any endorsement of the material on such websites or association with their operators.

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SpecReFlow: an algorithm for specular reflection restoration using flow-guided video completion

Jun 20, 2024, 2:36 PM

Haoli Yin, Rachel Eimen, Daniel Moyer, and Audrey K. Bowden. “ SpecReFlow: An Algorithm for Specular Reflection Restoration Using Flow-guided Video Completion .” Journal of Medical Imaging, vol. 11, no. 2, 024012, April 2024.

Specular reflections (SRs) are bright spots in endoscopy videos that can hinder a surgeon’s view and decision-making. Existing methods to remove these artifacts are often slow and prone to errors. SpecReFlow is introduced as the first comprehensive deep-learning solution to detect and restore SR areas in endoscopy videos, maintaining both spatial and temporal consistency.

SpecReFlow operates in three stages: first, an image preprocessing stage enhances the video contrast; second, a detection stage identifies where SR regions are located; third, a restoration stage replaces the SR pixels with accurate representations of the underlying tissue using optical flow to blend color and structure from adjacent video frames.

Tests show that SpecReFlow outperforms previous methods. The detection stage achieves a Dice score of 82.8% and a sensitivity of 94.6%. The restoration stage effectively combines information from multiple frames, providing more accurate restorations than methods using single frames.

SpecReFlow uniquely integrates temporal and spatial data for SR detection and restoration, outperforming older techniques that rely solely on spatial data from single frames. The software is designed for easy deployment in clinical settings, enhancing endoscopy video quality to support accurate diagnosis and treatment. Future improvements will focus on real-time application optimization.

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Ask Amy: After MeToo reflection, should I apologize to my female friend?

• Published: Jun. 21, 2024, 1:04 a.m.

Amy Dickinson offers advice to a man who wonders if he should apologize to his female friend for making inappropriate comments and jokes. Dreamstime

• Amy Dickinson

Dear Amy: Several years ago, I was involved in projects with a female friend (I’m a man).

I occasionally made jokes and said things that in retrospect I realize were inappropriate. She finally set me straight.

Then Covid and the MeToo movement hit, and I had time to revisit a number of things that at the time I felt were innocent remarks or actions, but were in fact wrong.

We have since become friends again, but I occasionally think that I’d like to apologize for every time I made her uncomfortable.

I know there are other men who have been even guiltier than I, but they have never apologized. Do I need to?

Would my apologizing now, years later, be just for my benefit – or would it be a kind gesture to a good friend?

– Conflicted

Dear Conflicted: Other people doing worse things than you have done should not enter into your equation. You cannot justify your own choices by finding negative examples to compare yourself to.

There is no downside for you to apologize to your friend for mistakes, “jokes” or comments you made years ago. She called you out at the time, and your friendship took a hit, but seems to have recovered.

Maya Angelou said it best: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

An apology would definitely benefit you, and offering forgiveness (if necessary) would also benefit her.

You say that your friend “set you straight” at the time and that your friendship suffered.

Opening up a discussion and offering her your current perspective and understanding – along with an apology – will help both of you to close the loop on this and move forward with greater understanding and intimacy.

Dear Readers: The following Q&A first ran in 2020.

Dear Amy: My family and I came to America from the Soviet Union when I was a teenager. We became citizens. I got educated here and own a successful business. I write well and speak correctly, with almost no accent. I feel like I am an American.

I love America, and try to learn new things every day, but I feel like something is missing in me.

Since I spent my formative years in a communist country (truly like another planet, compared to the USA), my “autopilot” reactions are not like those of typical American-born people. For instance, my manners, topics of conversation, humor, dress, attitude toward money, and even body language can seem “foreign.”

I feel like it is hurting me to be “culturally different.” I don’t think I say or do anything straight-up offensive – it’s more like a lot of little things.

How can I fix this “handicap”?

I would love to know how to be more American, but I can’t find any books or courses on the subject.

– NOT Born in the USA

Dear NOT: As we approach the celebration of another Independence Day, I appreciate this unusual and provocative question, which, honestly – has no “correct” answer.

First, I urge you not to see your own cultural background and habits as a “handicap,” but as an asset.

Yes, America is a country. But America is also really a series of concepts, experiments, and experiences. It is no one thing.

But here is a beautiful “American” ideal (so different from the culture you were raised in): All Americans have the right to be uniquely themselves, and that definitely includes you.

However, reinvention is baked into the American experience, and so if you want to affect “American” mannerisms, I suggest you become a student of American culture. Take a history course at your local community college. Follow up with a class on cinema and popular culture. Read Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Sherman Alexie, Gary Shteyngart, and Jericho Brown. Listen to Dolly Parton. Watch “Singing in the Rain,” “Goodfellas,” “Barbershop,” “13 th,” and “Ramy.”

Become a volunteer firefighter. Teach English as a second language to other newer citizens (teaching American concepts to others will show you how much you actually know). Work at your local polling station during the next election.

When you say or do something you believe is “off,” ask a friend to break it down for you. They might choose to tell you what I’m trying to tell you now – which is that your effort makes you the most “American” person they know.

Dear Readers: R. Eric Thomas is starting a new advice column. You can help Eric get started by sending your questions to [email protected] .

(You can email Amy Dickinson at [email protected] or send a letter to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. You can also follow her on Twitter @askingamy or Facebook .)

©2024 Amy Dickinson. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

More Ask Amy

• Ask Amy: What happens to the unanswered questions after you retire?
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• Ask Amy: My sister doesn’t fit in with our family and she should find new friends
• Ask Amy: Parent asks if 18-month-old child is on track developmentally

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• Cultural Issues and the 2024 Election

Immigration, gender identity, racial diversity and views of a changing society

Table of contents.

• Voters’ views about race and society, the impact of the legacy of slavery
• Most voters, but not all, view the nation’s diversity as a strength
• How should the country handle undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S.?
• Attitudes toward hearing other languages in public places
• Biden and Trump supporters’ views about discussing America’s historical successes, failures
• How does the U.S. compare with other countries?
• Views of women’s progress
• How much of a priority should marriage and children be?
• Abortion, IVF access and birth control
• Views of gender identity
• Voters’ attitudes toward use of gender-neutral pronouns
• Societal impact of more social acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual people
• Religion and government policy
• How much influence should the Bible have on the nation’s laws, if any?
• Views on the federal government’s role in promoting Christian values
• Most voters say it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral
• Is the justice system too tough on criminals, or not tough enough?
• Policing and law enforcement
• How Trump, Biden supporters view gun rights and ownership
• Views on the increasing number of guns in the U.S.
• Acknowledgments
• The American Trends Panel survey methodology

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand voters’ political values related to cultural issues in the context of the 2024 election. For this analysis, we surveyed 8,709 adults, including 7,166 registered voters, from April 8 to 14, 2024. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology . 

Here are the questions used for the report and its methodology . 

The 2024 presidential campaign is taking place amid intense debates over such topics as immigration, growing racial and ethnic diversity in the United States, the changing American family, crime and reproductive issues.

These topics sometimes are grouped together as “culture war” or “woke” issues.

On most – but not all – of these topics, voters who support President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have starkly different opinions. Yet in many cases, Biden and Trump supporters are themselves sharply divided.

Across more than 30 measures, some of the widest differences are on issues that have divided Americans for decades: the role of guns in society, as well as race and the legacy of slavery.

Yet, Biden and Trump supporters also have very different opinions across many other topics likely to be focal points in the campaign: gender identity and sexual orientation, crime and policing, reproductive issues, the influence of religion on society and the changes that have transformed life in the U.S. in recent decades.

A new survey by Pew Research Center of 8,709 adults – including 7,166 registered voters – conducted April 8-14, 2024, examines the political values of the Biden and Trump coalitions that underlie policy attitudes in many of these areas.

Jump to read about Biden and Trump supporters’ views on: Race and racial diversity | Immigration and language | American history | Gender and family | Gender identity and sexual orientation | Religion | Crime and policing | Guns

Among the major findings:

Enduring divisions on race and the legacy of slavery. Just 27% of registered voters who support Trump say the legacy of slavery affects the position of Black people in America today a great deal or fair amount; 73% say it has little or no impact.

Opinions among Biden supporters are nearly the opposite: 79% say slavery’s legacy still affects the position of Black people, while 20% say it has not too much or no effect.

Wide gaps on gender identity and same-sex marriage. While Americans have complex opinions on gender identity and transgender rights , a growing share of voters (65%) say that whether a person is a man or woman is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth. About a third (34%) say someone can be a man or woman, even if that differs from their sex at birth.

• Nearly all Trump supporters (90%) say gender is determined by sex at birth. By contrast, Biden supporters are more divided. About six-in-ten (59%) say gender can be different from sex at birth; 39% say gender is determined by sex at birth.
• Nearly a decade after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage , Biden and Trump supporters have starkly different views of the impact of that historic ruling. Biden supporters are about five times as likely (57%) as Trump supporters (11%) to say legalization of same-sex marriage is good for society.

Most Trump voters now favor a “national effort to deport” all those in the U.S. illegally. Opposition to allowing undocumented immigrants to stay in the country legally if they meet certain requirements has risen in recent years, driven largely by Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters.

• Nearly two-thirds of Trump backers (63%) support a national effort to deport all those in the country illegally, compared with just 11% of Biden supporters.

Divided views of the criminal justice system. A majority of voters (61%) say the criminal justice system is generally “not tough enough on criminals.” Just 13% say the system is too tough, while 25% say it treats criminals about right.

• Trump supporters (81%) are about twice as likely as Biden supporters (40%) to say the criminal justice system is not tough enough on criminals.
• Yet, there are much narrower differences in several priorities for the police and law enforcement: Overwhelming majorities of Biden and Trump supporters say it is extremely or very important for police and law enforcement to keep communities safe and to treat people of all racial and ethnic groups equally.

The changing American family. The structure of American family is very different than it was 40 or 50 years ago . Biden and Trump supporters view these changes very differently:   

• Roughly three times as many Trump supporters as Biden supporters say society is better if people prioritize marriage and family (59% vs. 19%).
• And Trump supporters are far more likely to take a negative view of the nation’s falling birth rate: 47% say people having fewer children is a bad thing, compared with 23% of Biden supporters.

Divisions on abortion, more agreement on availability of contraceptives. Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a right to abortion, support for legal abortion has ticked up in both parties.

• Today, 88% of Biden supporters say abortion should be legal in all or most cases; 38% of Trump supporters say the same.

By contrast, voters – including large majorities of both candidates’ supporters – overwhelmingly say the wide availability of birth control pills, condoms and other forms of contraception is good for society.

Broad support among voters for discussing America’s historical successes – and its flaws. The survey finds that while Biden and Trump supporters have profoundly different attitudes on many cultural issues, they mostly support the discussion of America’s historical successes, as well as its flaws.

• Nearly identical shares of Biden (74%) and Trump supporters (71%) say it is extremely or very important to have public discussions about the country’s historical successes and strengths.
• 78% of Biden supporters and 60% of Trump supporters say it is at least very important to have public discussions about the country’s failures and flaws.

Voters are very positive about more open discussions of mental health. More than eight-in-ten voters (87%) say that more people openly discussing mental health and well-being is good for society. This includes large majorities of both Biden (94% good thing) and Trump supporters (79%).

Related: Who do Americans feel comfortable talking to about their mental health?

There is broad skepticism about the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) in daily life. More than half of voters (55%) say this is bad for society, while 21% see this as a good thing (24% say it is neither good nor bad). There are only modest differences in these views between Trump supporters (59% say this is bad for society) and Biden supporters (51%).

Related: Growing public concern about the role of artificial intelligence in everyday life

Voters’ comfort level with some common – and less common – experiences

To some extent, voters’ political values are reflected in whether or not they’re comfortable with fairly common experiences.

A large share of voters (80%), including sizable majorities of Biden and Trump supporters, say they are comfortable with someone they don’t know saying they will keep them in their prayers.

Most women in opposite-sex marriages continue to take their husbands’ last names when they marry. Still, three-quarters of voters say they are comfortable with women not taking their husbands names.

Trump supporters are less comfortable than Biden supporters with women not taking their husbands’ last names. And among men who support the former president, 44% are uncomfortable with this practice, compared with 29% of women who support Trump.

There is a wider gap between Biden and Trump voters in comfort with people speaking a language other than English in public places in their communities. More than eight-in-ten Biden supporters (83%) are comfortable hearing languages other than English, compared with a narrow majority of Trump supporters (54%).

And, reflecting the wide divide between the two sides in opinions on transgender issues, just 20% of Trump supporters say they are comfortable with someone using “they/them” instead of “he” or “she” to describe themselves. More than three times as many Biden supporters (66%) – including 79% of Biden supporters under age 50 – say they are comfortable with the use of these gender-neutral pronouns.

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Biden, Trump are least-liked pair of major party presidential candidates in at least 3 decades

More than half of americans are following election news closely, and many are already worn out, americans have mixed views about how the news media cover biden’s, trump’s ages, an early look at black voters’ views on biden, trump and election 2024, voters’ views of trump and biden differ sharply by religion, most popular, report materials.

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