The first few weeks of my work with Dr. Lederer have been full of progress and learning. Working with Dr. Lederer has been an incredible journey of engaging with scientific research from start to finish. Although we are not ready to submit our manuscript to a journal quite yet, our readiness toward publication is closer in sight.
I have spent several months coding qualitative responses to the question of “What, if anything, did you learn after watching the educational intervention?” Through content analysis, I categorized over 300 responses to themes, such as learning everything and nothing, and about prevention, transmission, symptomatology, health consequences, etc. Once all the data was reviewed by both Dr. Lederer and me, we input the information into SPSS, a statistical software, to compute the significance of our results. After, I was tasked with writing about the results. Through academic and research opportunities, I have engaged in scientific writing, but never for the purposes of publication. While my section is still in its rough draft stage, the process has been an exciting learning opportunity for scientific writing.
My scientific writing skills have also been refined through the submission of my first poster presentation proposal for the American College Health Association Conference in May 2017. Dr. Lederer and I used the same research to develop a proposal to share findings with health professionals, educators, and administrators about gaps in student sexual health knowledge and possible ways to minimize the deficiencies. We will not find out about our acceptance for a few weeks, but I am grateful for the opportunity to be considered for such an incredible presenter position.
My work on sexual health knowledge deficiencies has become an integral part of my college experience and I am thankful for the chance to see the work to fruition. I hope to incorporate this research into future career endeavors whether it is through direct engagement with sexuality health education or indirect understanding of distal and proximal factors that can influence sexual health outcomes. I look forward to working on the next steps of this project and I am hopeful that the research will be perceived as significant for others as it has been for me.