Hi everyone! My first weeks of the Laidlaw Program have been going super well! Though I’m definitely a bit behind on my research timeline, I’m proud of the work that I’ve done so far. For the first week, I was mostly focused on nailing down exactly my research question and doing a brief literature review on existing research on student health insurance literacy. There were a few studies in the Journal of American College Health that I thought Georgetown didn’t have access to which was an initial issue for me. However, I worked with the incredible Lau librarians and they showed me how to access everything that I needed so it ended up not being a problem at all. I definitely underuse the Georgetown library’s resources, so this was a helpful reminder of all of the support and resources that they can offer. During the first week, I also worked on developing my questionnaire and promotional materials in preparation for my IRB application. 

The second week was entirely focused on my IRB application. I’ve learned that working with the IRB is tough—of course, the protection of human subjects is super important, but there is a ton of administrative work involved. My biggest challenges included the tedious human subjects training, the complicated protocol document, the specific language of consent agreements, and the specific formatting required for all documents uploaded. I was super grateful for the help of my faculty mentor Dr. Wu Zeng and the IRB faculty office hours as I navigated the IRB process. Though it was slightly behind schedule, I was able to get my application submitted by Friday of week 2. 

For the third week, I was expecting to devote most of my time to the planning of my questionnaire recruitment as I had no idea when I would hear back from the IRB. However, after responding to a few clarifications, I received IRB approval on Wednesday which was super great news. This means that I was able to start my recruitment process a little bit earlier than expected. My current goals are recruiting more Georgetown students to take the survey and learning more about data analysis tools. Getting a sample of students that accurately reflects the student body is my biggest challenge at the moment. If anyone has any suggestions of ways I can promote my survey, please reach out to me! 

Finally, to shamelessly plug my survey—if anyone Georgetown undergraduate students have some extra time, please consider taking my health insurance literacy survey. It takes around 5-10 minutes and there’s an optional raffle for a $100 Amazon gift card. Here’s the link: https://georgetown.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dcAiiPQUOYthB5Q. Thanks!!!