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.
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Muskaan, this is a thought out reflection on the movement from producing results to interpreting and communicating them. I particularly like your description of a poster as something that should 'offer room for conversation'. A strong research poster does not need to contain every detail of the report; it should make the central argument accessible, give appropriate prominence to the most important findings and invite the viewer to ask questions.
Your advisor’s caution about causal language is extremely important. Words such as impact, effect, and led to can imply that the research design has established causation. Unless the pilot evaluation contains an appropriate comparison or counterfactual and can rule out plausible alternative explanations, it will usually be safer to describe observed changes, differences, patterns or associations. This does not diminish the value of the findings; it ensures that the strength of the claim remains proportionate to the evidence.
Your comparison between your degree and social-science research is also interesting, although I would avoid treating positivism, quantitative analysis and social-scientific interpretation as opposing categories. Sociological and other social research can be quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods, and none of these approaches is free from interpretation. Researchers make theoretically informed decisions about what to measure, how to categorise it, which comparisons matter and what observed patterns might mean. Equally, qualitative interpretation should be systematic and grounded in evidence rather than treated as unconstrained subjectivity. The valuable lesson may be that this project has made the interpretive decisions involved in all forms of research, and the uncertainty surrounding them, more visible to you.
It is encouraging that you are becoming more conscious of your contribution as a leader. Delegating tasks can help the team use its time and strengths effectively, while asking for help or clarification demonstrates that leadership does not require pretending to possess every answer. As the deadline approaches, also ensure that delegation remains collaborative: responsibilities should be clear, workloads should be reasonable and the final report and poster should retain collective ownership.
You appear well placed for the final week. The challenge now is to preserve analytical care and constructive teamwork while the pressure to finish increases. Excellent progress.