28th June 2022
Research and recruitment was the main topic of this week. The week started with sending out numerous emails to possible participants in hope we would get a response, even if we got just one. I got a good amount of exercise walking around campus finding places to display posters too! I wanted to make sure I put up posters in as many places as I could to attract as many participants as possible. There were some difficulties with this, one being some buildings not allowing posters to go up, although with the number of buildings I found to display the posters I think this will outweigh the few that didn’t allow them!
I spent any of my remaining time carrying out further research for the write-up, which allowed me to enhance and add to my first introduction draft. Out of habit, whenever I see an e-scooter on campus, I start to recall all the information I’ve read about e-scooters as if I’ve memorised each article! The thorough research that we input into the Excel table has significantly helped with carrying out the introduction efficiently, with the table allowing me to pinpoint each theme to discuss and identify key facts to include.
The next day involved an influx of responses, just as we hoped for. I guess running around campus displaying the posters paid off! Having an Excel spreadsheet of the participant list and times/dates available helped to visualise and organise availability for each new participant as there were a lot of dates being discussed, which could have easily led to confusion and double-bookings. I had to keep on top of my emails so that I was replying and sorting out each date efficiently for each participant.
We had a Summer Vacation Research Competition meeting with fellow interns from the other projects. It was a really nice experience to meet everyone (even some familiar faces) and hear what they have all been up to! This was actually an opportunity to promote our project to possible participants, which went successfully as we received a significant amount of interest! Katrina showed me how to input the participant data into the Excel spreadsheet, which seemed quite complex at first but turned out to be a fun process. I learnt how to calculate formulas for the subjective exercise experience survey, such as positive well-being and physiological distress, which was very interesting to observe for each participant.
We had some difficulty with the Cortex machine with our 6th participant, which meant that the gas analysis measurements were not displaying. This added on approximately 30 minutes to the trial, however, our participant was very understanding, which made the process easier. By the time we reached our 7th participant, the process was like a breeze! I feel much more familiar with each step and what comes next. Looking forward to a busy week of participants next week!
