FWS Student Highlights: Julianna Kinsolving
In the OSCAR
program, I am currently working on entering and coding data from campus climate
surveys about sexual assault for Women and Gender Studies. I enter the answers
from several surveys, which include both numbers from scales and free response
answers, into an Excel sheet, then clean the data for strange/irrelevant
answers or mistakes, and will soon be learning to code the data into the SPSS
system. I work under the supervision of Angela Hattery, the director of the
Women and Gender Studies program, and a truly spectacular person to work with. I
have discovered several things over the course of my research with WGST. The
first thing I have discovered is that George Mason University is a very safe
place; there were many more surveys without any incidents than there were with
such. That being said, there were still some very sad incidents found in these
surveys, and it was interesting to read when, where, and how sexual assault
happens on this campus. I also found how truly diverse GMU is, with many
different answers to the race/ethnicity and sexual orientation spaces. One
shocking fact I found was how time consuming research can be. I realized the
reason why studies can take years to be completed, especially when there are
special factors that can delay the process; in my case, sometimes the data
would be invalid and could not be used. I find this research project very
related to my long term goals. I have wanted to learn the very valuable skill
of coding; in this technological age, it is useful to have knowledge about computer
programming. Learning such knowledge now in my freshman year will give me many
advantages as I progress on in my career. I am very grateful to be able to help
with research about such an important topic with such kind people.
In the OSCAR
program, I am currently working on entering and coding data from campus climate
surveys about sexual assault for Women and Gender Studies. I enter the answers
from several surveys, which include both numbers from scales and free response
answers, into an Excel sheet, then clean the data for strange/irrelevant
answers or mistakes, and will soon be learning to code the data into the SPSS
system. I work under the supervision of Angela Hattery, the director of the
Women and Gender Studies program, and a truly spectacular person to work with. I
have discovered several things over the course of my research with WGST. The
first thing I have discovered is that George Mason University is a very safe
place; there were many more surveys without any incidents than there were with
such. That being said, there were still some very sad incidents found in these
surveys, and it was interesting to read when, where, and how sexual assault
happens on this campus. I also found how truly diverse GMU is, with many
different answers to the race/ethnicity and sexual orientation spaces. One
shocking fact I found was how time consuming research can be. I realized the
reason why studies can take years to be completed, especially when there are
special factors that can delay the process; in my case, sometimes the data
would be invalid and could not be used. I find this research project very
related to my long term goals. I have wanted to learn the very valuable skill
of coding; in this technological age, it is useful to have knowledge about computer
programming. Learning such knowledge now in my freshman year will give me many
advantages as I progress on in my career. I am very grateful to be able to help
with research about such an important topic with such kind people. 
