I'm now at the midpoint of my research project, and looking back, I've already learnt so much about what real research looks like.

My first task was creating a Qualtrics questionnaire - something I'd never done before and consequently, it took a lot longer than I initially expected. I had to cut certain questions I'd originally wanted to include, think carefully about where to add logic so participants only saw relevant questions, and constantly check I wasn't making the survey too long, all while getting used to a completely new system. But by the end, I was really happy with the final result, and it taught me just how much thought goes into something that looks simple from the participant's side.

Next came designing a poster on Canva to send out to local care-experienced groups that my supervisor had connections with. This was honestly one of my favourite parts of the process so far, as it was nice to get a bit creative after the more technical work of building the survey. Once it was ready and I had approval from my supervisors, I sent it out, and initial responses have slowly started coming in. With early data arriving, I've also now started learning how to analyse it in R. My supervisor is teaching me as I go, and using R is another new skill I'm looking forward to building on.

In the past week, I've also spent a good chunk of time figuring out how to classify participants' occupations as STEM or non-STEM (a vital part of my research). This turned out to be far more complicated than I had expected, as there isn't a one-step system to use, as there is in America. I looked into different UK classification systems and ended up presenting my findings to my supervisors so we could decide on the best pathway together. We ultimately agreed on using the Royal Society's original "Defining Occupations in STEM-M&H" (2023) framework alongside the CASCOT coding system.

At the moment, I'm in a bit of a waiting phase - still recruiting participants and emailing a wide range of care-experienced-related charities to try to reach as many people as possible. In between, I've been doing a lot of reading around the barriers care-experienced individuals face, and the factors currently thought to influence whether children in care go on to engage with STEM subjects and careers. This background reading has been genuinely eye-opening and has further fuelled my passion to break the barriers that so many children in care experience.

 I'm excited to see where the next half of this project takes me.