• Question: What's the most challenging thing you came across which you had to overcome during your research?

    Asked by Tilly to Ben, Sam, Kirsty, Maggi, Rose on 14 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Kirsty Miller

      Kirsty Miller answered on 14 Jun 2017:

      Hi 🙂 That’s an interesting question! I think for me, all of the schools that I was going to use dropped out! I had about 4 schools that I was going to use, then for various reasons, none of them could take part!
      I had a little panic and spammed a whole load of schools begging them to take part and some replied to say they were interested!
      It’s all part of research though – you have to expect that things won’t go smoothly. I think if there weren’t problems you’d be doing something wrong! You have to make sure you don’t get upset with setbacks and always have a plan B, C, F etc! The good thing is that everything that goes wrong gives you something to discuss so you can always talk about how resourceful you were to overcome the problem 😉

    • Photo: Rose Turner

      Rose Turner answered on 17 Jun 2017:

      Hi Tilly,
      The thing I find difficult is turning research ideas and questions into clear hypotheses that can be answered using specific tests. I often find I come up with an idea an think ‘wow, great, I’ll look at that’ and when it comes to the nitty gritty of working out exactly HOW to do it, I find myself sitting in front of a computer scratching my head! This problem inevitably involves a lot of sitting and thinking and planning and re-planning. However this is also where talking things through with others can be really helpful. Doing a PhD we tend to work with one or two ‘supervisors’ (supervisors are something in between a tutor, a mentor and a boss) who are experts in the area, and who can help us with these problems. Sometimes, I just talk things through with psychologist friends and that can help me to work things out. And sometimes, I call my mum (who doesn’t usually have a clue what I’m talking about) and in explaining the problem to her in a straightforward way (no complicated jargon!) I can sometimes find the answer.
      Recently, I did an experiment that didn’t work. I was trying to make things different for participants in two conditions, but I didn’t make it different enough! I thought it had been a big waste of time, but when I looked at the data I found some other interesting things that I could talk and write about. So ‘failures’ are inevitable in science, but it’s through the failures that we find the new and exciting things that we weren’t expecting – and the unexpected is often the most groundbreaking! So I’m a lot more relaxed about things going wrong now! 🙂

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