FWS Research Assistant Highlights: Randall Drury

After graduating from Germanna Community College in December 2013 with a two-year degree, I enrolled at GMU to continue my higher education. It was during my first semester at Mason (as a junior) when I began to consider which fields of psychology that my interests best fit. Initially, those interests were as broad as the Potomac is wide and this prompted me to seek out advising. Following a meeting one afternoon with Dr. Hurley, I took the suggestion to apply for undergraduate research experience. Soon after that, I began working with Dr. Carryl Baldwin in the Auditory Research Group (ARG) and the Mason Transportation Institute (MTI) and my interests began to narrow.

The more involved I became in research the more my working relationship with Carryl grew - she became my unofficial mentor. Prior to the summer term, we discussed the option of independent study. I signed up for this option as a summer semester elective (PSYC 460 - Introduction to Human Factors). Also, I learned about the OSCAR program through the Office of Student Scholarship and secured a federal work-study undergraduate research assistantship with Carryl for the 2014-15 school year. Since then, Carryl has become my official mentor and I have benefited much through my lab experience.

From week to week I collaborate with the other students (graduate and undergraduate) of the two labs. Along with the other RAs (research assistants) within the ARG, research is conducted on sustained attention to response task (SART). The SART investigates the influence of music on maintenance of focused attention. Within the MTI, I am learning programming of the motion-based driving simulator through JavaScript-based scenario scripting. My lab activities include: writing code, running participants, or reviewing journal articles. Thus far my experience in applied research has certainly been well-rounded; I have also consistently met with Carryl and others RAs to discuss past and up-coming Human Factors Applied Cognition (HFAC) general proceedings. I spend between 10 and 15 hours a week enjoying these opportunities. Today, my interests are in driver distraction, usability, perception and performance. As an ancillary benefit to my research experience, I enrolled in another round of independent study (PSYC 460 - Driver Behavior Assessment & Training) this past August with my mentor.

Over the past week, I learned how to edit an abstract for submission to a peer-reviewed journal. I engaged in this process with Carryl and other RAs, regarding the previously mentioned SART study. If it happens to be accepted for publication, my name will be attached. I discovered that being published (potentially) as an undergraduate is an advantage.

Throughout my college career travels, I could have taken a different direction at any number of intersections along the way. I got involved in research as an undergraduate however, and am now earnestly pursuing HFAC psychology. It is through the OSCAR program and federal work-study funding that I owe my gratitude. Being given the ability to earn while partaking in research allowed me to accomplish more in the same amount of time, and having time to get things done makes all the difference in what the future holds for me. Importantly enough, a graduate degree in HFAC makes a lot of sense for my future.

FWS Research Assistant Highlights: Naila Rafique

This semester I have the great pleasure to assist Dr. J.P. Singh with an on-going research project on international development that will result in a book publication. Through the help of two other research assistants, Corina Solorzano and Salimatou Ouedraogo, we are coding several World Bank projects, looking for deliberation and participation practices.

What I actually do on a weekly basis is quiet complex and very intriguing. I, along with the other two RAs, collect and summarize documents and material from World Bank projects and then use a sophisticated coding scheme that was also designed with our help to measure different factors about each project with a focus on information technologies and development. This process involves great detail and precise intercoder reliability, which is being effectively met with the importance on dialogue and calibration amongst each other. 

I discovered that measuring participation is more complex then it seems. It not only requires looking at many stages of a project and really analyzing the importance of each part of the process but also looking at the post operations and implications of it on a certain population.

This is related to my long-term goals in many ways. The first thing is that this opportunity has led my exposure to research in the field of international development. I have also through this experience been able to construct and use a coding scheme that really helps better analyze a document succinctly. These are all things that will be very useful when looking to do my own research for my masters and eventually doctorate, which will examine and probe literature and content of the same nature. I am very thankful to OSCAR for giving me this opportunity and exposure that will be extremely helpful in my future ventures.

FWS Research Assistant Highlights: Corina Solorzano

 I work with two other research assistants, Naila Rafique and Salimatou Cristal Ouedraogo, both Global Affairs majors in the Honors Program and both seniors filled with a lot of knowledge that help contribute to this project. The three of us are working as research assistants for Dr. Jatinder Singh, a professor here at George Mason University as well a knowledge scholar within this area. What we do is code projects from the World Bank database and look for participation within development projects in the sector of information technology and communication.

This semester was about getting all of us to the same level of coding and being able to look at one project and all of us coming up with the same results. I am happy to say this has been completed and now we go on to the next level. We are starting the main coding of all the World Bank Projects under our sector with certain conditions. We code on a weekly basis and then reconvene in order to discuss our findings. Our research doesn’t end this semester and is carrying on into the spring so we’ll have a lot more results then.

This week we discovered that some of our projects might have to be dismissed because they have missing documents or have been cancelled so we need to work with these bumps in the road. But I am glad to say that this week we have finished the “trial” session you can say and will begin to code our main projects. We are all at the same level and are ready to continue our projects.

I’m unsure of the specifics of what I want to do in the future. I know I want to stay within the Global Affairs sector, and my concentration, International Development interests me immensely. I want to continue to learn about different cultures and how they came to be about and continue to adapt and change. These projects allow me to see a different side of certain countries and regions that wouldn’t normally read about in a textbook. I am directly seeing the actions being taken in these projects and observing the changes it has actually made within the region.

FWS Research Assistant Highlights: Mark Cameron Hatcher

I currently work in the Human Emotions Research Laboratory under Dr. June Tangney where I am a research assistant working on two longitudinal studies. One is a prospective study of moral emotions and cognitions (i.e. shame and guilt) and recidivism of 508 serious offenders. The second is a Randomized Clinical Trial of the restorative justice-inspired Impact of Crime group intervention of 200 jail inmates nearing release into the community. Moreover, Study 2 aims to empirically assess the feasibility and acceptability of victim impact group interventions amongst jail inmates. Both are generally aimed to assess the well being of participants post-release over time in order to enhance offenders’ reintegration into the community.

First and foremost, I am responsible for collecting time-sensitive data, which consists of arranging and conducting structured clinical interviews over the phone with the previously incarcerated. At this point in Study 1 (ongoing since 2002), the majority of participants are eligible for later phases in the project, meaning that most of them have been released into the community. At least two hours a week is dedicated to investigative work aimed to track down and contact participants who are eligible to participate in later phases of the project (we follow-up with participants at minimum every three years up to 12 years post-release). Once a participant is reached, a structured clinical interview can take anywhere from an hour to two hours to complete, depending on the participant. Examples of some of the questionnaires in the interview include HIV Risk Assessment, the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI), and measures that assess family and friend connectedness, community connectedness, and substance abuse. Due to the sensitive nature of some of the questions, I have been trained in suicide assessment as to connect a participant with appropriate referrals and resources when a participant affirms items on a scale that indicate they may be at immediate risk for harming themselves. Outside of data collection and investigative work, I am also responsible for data entry and coding official FBI criminal records to prepare for data entry (to assess recidivism in Study 2). As I have largely been responsible for coding criminal history for repeat offenders over the past couple months, I have learned that criminal records, classification reports, and self-reported criminal behavior are often discrepant with one another. This certainly highlights the challenges of this area of research and any type of longitudinal research that aims to piece together the various aspects of an individual’s life to assess levels of functioning in the community.

I am striving to pursue a graduate degree in Clinical Psychology that will give me the flexibility to research the complex interactions between comorbid psychological disorders (e.g. substance abuse disorders and mood or personality disorders) and areas of daily functioning such as academic performance, motivation, and perception of independence. A great deal of meaningful research and literature in the field of Clinical Psychology is longitudinally based; thus, being apart of these longitudinal projects has prepared me for the future as a scholar in this field.

FWS Research Assistant Highlights: Brooke Thomas

I have been working with Dr. Erika Lin for a year and a half now researching festivity in Early Modern literature. The research will be used for her new book which centers on representations of celebrations and holidays in literature in Early Modern England. Most succinctly, I have been doing database research which involves reading and analyzing thousands of Early Modern “books” from the Early English Books Online archive. I put quotations around the word books because they aren’t the normal coda style modern readers and students will think of; books from the Early Modern period can range from single broadside sheets to 800 page treatises on botany. There’s a great variety in the things I have been reading; my favorite has to be a fifty page text on how to blood-let your horse when it gets a headache. I’ve gone through the EEBO database beginning in year 1600 and made it up to year 1610: that’s roughly 4,621 books. Needless to say, I’ve been doing a lot of reading.

This semester, however, I’ve paused working with EEBO and began analyzing the English Broadside Ballad Archive, sponsored by the University of California Santa Barbara. In my work, I sort the documents I find based on their relevancy to a list of key terms that have to do with Early Modern festivity and holidays. Then, I read the selected documents, in this case ballads, and mark them for references to festivity. If a document does have festive references, I place it in a secondary database for Dr. Lin to reference. Thus far, out of my nearly 4700 readings, I’ve found about 250 relevant books/ballads.

This week, I’ve been working closely with the EBBA archive. I’ve been focusing on ballads that relate especially to “holidays.” So far, I’ve found a lot about literary representations of festive celebrations for Christmas, Easter, and May Day. My favorite reference from this week concerns men and women placing garlands on each other to celebrate May Day.

My position as an OSCAR Research Assistant for Dr. Lin relates directly to what I plan to do in my future career. I love research and the skills I’ve learned through OSCAR and Dr. Lin, especially with database research, will be especially helpful in setting me apart from other applicants for research positions.