The week began with a research poster workshop, a fun opportunity to channel our creativity and starting thinking about how we may design our poster in way that makes it intriguing, easy to understand, and offers room for conversation. On the following day, a meeting with our impact advisor was helpful in pointing us in the right direction with the report structure and where to expand/limit discussions.
Our team made progress by continuing to populate sections of the report draft and beginning to produce figures for the pilots' endline data, which we received early in the week. I contributed to this progress by continuing to write up our results and planning ideas for the main body discussion - our advisor had flagged our use of language which was indicative of causal relationships (e.g., 'impact') and, going forward, I aim to improve my communication so that it is better suited to our research. It was enjoyable, and challenging, to start interpreting our data - I began to further appreciate the difference between the more positivist approach used in my degree course in comparison to the lens of interpretation in social science research.
Looking ahead to next week, I am hopeful to continue finishing off our report's first draft and the accompanying poster so that we can end the research summer with a solid foundation for our research and analysis. More personally, I have noticed the way in which I am contributing to the group as a leader: delegating tasks and asking teammates for help/clarity when needed. I aim to keep this up as we head into the final push of these 6 weeks.