Today I continued calling for Psych Distancing. Today I had a lot more success than Thursday, in that more than half of the families answered the phone with all of the families who answered either scheduling on the spot, or asking for the number to call back at a better time. What I did find interesting was from about 5-5:30, almost all of the numbers I called went to voicemail. I am assuming most of this occured because that is a busy getting home from work/daycare and eating dinner time, (which from my nannying experience I am aware is a very busy time).
January 2012 Archives
Today I put together packets for Psych Distancing. This included making copies of the Child Behavior Questionnaire, Family Information Questionnaire, Consent Forms, and a Fantasy/Imagination Questionnaire. I spent most of my time either in the copy room or in Sam's office putting the packets together. I'm currently in an evaluation class and we are talking about surveys and what makes a good survey, so I was interested in the questionnaires and wondered how the lab chose particular ones over others. I also was curious how the information from these surveys/questionnaires is incorporated into the results of studies.
Today I continued working on BMI calling for Josh. I had a lot of voice mails to return and unfortunately we didn't need anymore participants in that age group. I called about 20 different people today and wasn't able to schedule anyone. I am going to continue returning voice mails tomorrow and hopefully get a hold of more interested parents.
Today in lab I called for the DCF. We haven't had a calling list for the DCF that is this large yet, so I'm still working my way through it! I made about 42 calls and was able to schedule 4 participants. Aside from those 4, there were about 4 other parents that were really interested but either didn't have their schedule with them or wanted to discuss it with their spouse, so hopefully they'll call back and schedule too (otherwise I'll call them in a week or so and pester some more!)
Calling can be boring, but I really enjoy talking to the families. Some people are in a busy period in their lives, which is understandable. The one thing I don't really understand is why people sign up for something like IPP and then get really upset when we call. I've only had one parent ever yell at me - THAT was interesting - but a lot of them expect a lot more compensation. I realize that research outside of university settings often pays well, but a lot of that research is skin care products/medicine/etc... I'm not sure who would want to test those products on their children anyway! Regardless, a lot of the parents are really interested and willing to
help contribute to the ongoing research, which I think is so great. Talking with them makes me more excited to start testing in the next couple weeks and actually become part of the process.
For the first half of my time here today, I folded 4 boxes of t-shirts that are given to participants when they complete the study. I divided them up and put them in rooms 61,62, and the DSCN lab room. Then, I put back some EFM DVDs into their appropriate binders. For the last part of my time, I worked on thank-yous from the Psych Distancing binder and called two families to verify addresses. The work I did today reminded me that there are many tasks that are involved in running a lab.
Today I continued with calling 4 year olds for the BMI study. I called about 50 people and was able to schedule 3 participants. We are now trying to find 2 overweight boys and finish up filling in the empty spots! I also received 6 messages from families that were very interested in participating and with be returning those phone calls tomorrow. Today I learned a couple of short cuts on how to search for participants on the xcel list and I think that is going to save me a lot time for future calling.
Today I was in for almost the entire day. I started with calling for the PDEF/Psych Distancing. I called about 35 people and was able to schedule 3. There usually are not that many disconnected numbers or people who didn't answer, so I was surprised.
After a couple hours with that, I began calls for the DCF. I made 21 calls and got 5 kids scheduled. I also made copies of the packet for the upcoming studies this next week.
Finally I spent a couple hours entering data into IPP. I got through most of the Survey 2's but still have quite a few to go!
This next week we have a few DCF sessions, and one of those I can make it to almost the entire session, so I'm looking forward to that.
Today I did more BMI calling but started recruiting four year olds. I called about 30 people and was able to schedule 1 girl. I noticed after I had her in the computer that her 5th birthday was the day before her appointment. I'm going to be checking if we need an additional 5 year old girl for the study. Although this was a mistake, I'm glad that I caught it before we got her into the lab and now I know to triple check the date and birthday of the participants before scheduling them.
Tuesday was my first day in the lab, and I started my session with the CITI privacy training. Although dense in information and time consuming, it was interesting to learn about not only the privacy training and procedures to follow, but to look back on the history of research that had caused controversy over privacy issues. Being a sociology major, I had previously learned about many of the studies, and it was interesting to see the same studies talked about in a different light, a light that I had personally never taken much time to consider before.
I also started to look at the lab manual, and realized that I have a lot to learn in these next few weeks, and I am both excited and a little nervous to continue being introduced to the people, research, and procedures of the lab.
Today in lab I called families recruiting for the Psych Distancing study. I was calling families with 6 year olds, and many of the families that I reached were unwilling to participate because their child is enrolled in all day kindergarden, and with the addition of full day schooling were too busy to schedule an appointment. This made me realize one of the difficulties in scheduling occurs when children become more busy as they get older. I can relate this to my nanny job with 3 children, one in all day kindergarden, age 3, and 9 months. This school year I have noticed that with Liam's addition of full time school along with his other activities, he doesn't have much free time.
Today in the lab I finished up the calling for the BMI study for 6 year old males. I called about 10 different families and was able to schedule the last 3 participants! I talked with Josh and I will be continuing on this project and move to another age group until we are finished with recruitment. I also spoke with him about calling children that were born prematurely and he agreed that we should screen out anyone that in under 27 weeks. I made sure to double check that before I made some calls today. I also did some additional research on that and found that there is little known about the correlation between premature birth and executive function. I was able to find a few studies that were done in the past 3 years in other countries, but nothing has yet been published in the US. I think this might be a really cool project to look into in the future and since we have quite a few premature children in our data base it would be easy to recruit for!
Tuesday was my first day in the lab, and I started my session with the CITI privacy training. Although dense in information and time consuming, it was interesting to learn about not only the privacy training and procedures to follow, but to look back on the history of research that had caused controversy over privacy issues. Being a sociology major, I had previously learned about many of the studies, and it was interesting to see the same studies talked about in a different light, a light that I had personally never taken much time to consider before.
I also started to look at the lab manual, and realized that I have a lot to learn in these next few weeks, and I am both excited and a little nervous to continue being introduced to the people, research, and procedures of the lab.
Today in lab I worked on more calling and scheduling for the SRF study. I called quite a few families and I was able to schedule four participants. I also had two families who were fairly certain they wanted to participate but needed to check their calendars or talk to their spouses first. Both families should be e-mailing me soon and hopefully we'll be able to set something up. If both families end up scheduling then that would be 4 more participants!
I've noticed that scheduling 8 year olds, a lot of them have younger siblings whose ages work for our study. I have been able to schedule a lot of sibling sessions which is great, it's definitely efficient. Parents seem to really love scheduling both/all of their children, I think it helps that it takes away the challenge of only one child participating and getting a toy/t-shirt, they seem glad that both children get to have the experience. I'm looking forward to starting sessions next week, it should be fun!
Today I continued working with Josh on the BMI calling list looking for 6 year old males. I called about 50 families and had a lot of interested parents but was unable to schedule anyone. Many of the people did not qualify for the study or asked that I called them back for measurements. While I was going through the calling lists I started to notice that many of the people on the list had boys that were born pre-maturely. It made me wonder if that could have an effect on their growth rate in childhood and therefore making it harder for us to find participates in the higher BMI percentiles. I also was curious to know if being born premature had any effect on the development of executive function and may be a confounding factor in the study. I think it would be beneficial to look at the research done on this topic and if there is none to conduct a study in the lab!
Today I worked on cutting and laminating DCCS cards again. I worked on the last set of cards that Cathy and Sam need.
Today in lab I worked on calling participants for the SRF study. We're focusing on getting more eight year old participants so I called off the new 8-year old list. I called 40 families and I was able to schedule 5 research sessions for the upcoming weeks.
I also have a possible 6th session to be scheduled. I'm corresponding over e-mail with one of the parents who requested some possible appointment times be sent to her, as she was in the car and couldn't look at a calendar. She seemed very excited to participate though, so hopefully she'll get back to me and we'll be able to figure out a time that works.
I was able to schedule 3 sessions with one family, they happened to have a 4 year old, a 6 year old and an 8 year old. I was able to fit them all in in one evening, so we'll see how three back-to-back sessions go! It should be pretty interesting.
I'm planning on coming in again later this week to do some more calling, hopefully it's just as successful as today was!
Today I learned the calling procedure for the study on psych distancing. I called about 20 families and was only able to speak to 3 in person. I was able to schedule one participant and the other asked if I would call her back when she got permission from her husband. This made me realize the extent to which the lab must go to receive consent to do a study on a child. It made me wonder if it should be required to get permission from both parents from their children to partake, especially when they have joint custody of the child.
Today I worked with Josh on recruiting the last few participants for the BMI study. I was unable to schedule any participants but left about 50 messages so hopefully we hear back from 3 of them! I spoke with a women who had an autistic son so he was unable to participant in this particular study. However, I let her know that we often do studies on Autism and I'm sure there would be an opportunity for him to participate in the near future. I learned that it was important to address the sensitive issues with the positive attitude and always reassure the parents that their children have an equal opportunity to participate.
Today I worked with Josh on recruiting the last few participants for the BMI study. I was unable to schedule any participants but left about 50 messages so hopefully we hear back from 3 of them!
Today I worked with Josh on recruiting the last few participants for the BMI study. I was unable to schedule any participants but left about 50 messages so hopefully we here back from 3 of them! I also learned how to use the copy maker
Hi Everyone,
If you can attend, here are the articles to read for lab meeting.
Today I cut and laminated DCCS cards. Sam and Cathy specified that there were a lot of cards that needed to be cut and I think needed to be sent somewhere or used for a study. It's interesting to think about how something as simple as pictures on cards can be used in executive function tasks for children, as well as the individual differences in children's performance on these tasks.
Great job with your entries! Yes, the papers will be posted here weekly, as soon as I get them from Nhi.
Secondly, after you write an entry, make sure that the status in the Publishing window says "published," not "draft." The privacy setting can say public because there is a password to get to the blog itself. Nevertheless, we should not be using this blog for private family information- no names please!
Today I worked on IPP for awhile and got the rest of the survey 1s entered. Then Wendy came in and we went over the DCCS protocol and flowcharts - pretty confusing at first, so going over it and seeing it definitely helped. Once I get into doing it, I don't think it will be too bad!
Today I met with Wendy and went over most of the tasks for the DCF study. I've seen them and read through them all multiple times, but it was nice to actually be hands-on with the tasks. I need to do some more memorizing and also go over the DCCS in more detail. I'm really looking forward to running sessions and working with the kids.
Today in lab I just did some general housekeeping type of tasks for the SRF study. I looked over the new consent and parent forms for the study sessions to get a better feel for what is included on them now and to see how the procedures have changed. I made some notes for myself of things to remember to say when going over consent with the parents. I think the changes that have been made are great. The new parent questionnaire on their child's behavior looks like a great tool that will be able to provide a deeper insight into each individual participant. Hopefully it will be useful in the final analysis of the study. I also took some time to get a feel for the new organization of the lab, I made sure to take note of where the study materials will now be kept and what types of things will be kept in the study rooms. I also went through the sessions I had run from last semester to make sure that I had documented all of them in the appropriate spreadsheet, and I started inputing data from some of the 8-year old sessions. I thought it might be helpful to get a jump start on inputting that data since Callie who previously worked with the 8-year olds graduated. I'm looking forward to calling and recruiting next week; hopefully I'm able to get some families signed up and I can start running sessions.
In lab I was able to meet with Jason to go over the new protocol for lab. We were able to run through all of the new computer tasks which was great, I'm excited to start running them in sessions. I think it will be a bit of a challenge to keep the kids interested, however. Some of the tasks are pretty long and redundant, I'll have to make sure to sound extra excited and be really encouraging during these tasks. It'll be fun to start figuring out some strategies to make these tasks more manageable for the participants. I'm excited to be back in the lab for the semester. It sounds like we've been making some great progress as far as numbers go for the four and six year olds. Our next task is to recruit 8-year-old participants. I should be getting the calling list soon, and hopefully next week I'll be able to start setting up sessions. I'm excited to start working with a different age group; it should be interesting to see how their performance and responses differ from the six-year-olds I've been working with thus far.
I love the new blog set-up - I just hope I can figure out how to use it... so far so good!
Today I worked on IPP. I printed and sorted through all of the calling lists that have been returned since the end of last semester, and then I worked on entering new kids and updating previously entered kids.
I also attended lab meeting. We briefly went over the schedule for the next few weeks. I am hoping to be able to attend as much as possible, because the topics/readings are usually pretty interesting. Dr. Zelazo noted that there are quite a few bag lunches coming up that should be worth going to - I made a note to look these up and see who the speakers/topics will be!
I had one question regarding lab meetings, will the readings be posted on this blog for undergrad access?
