Personally, I feel frustrated with the amount of research experience I have not gained since the summer of 2010.  In spring 2010, I discontinued my GRA position with Dr. King-Sears in the hopes of developing a pilot research study utilizing MBSR with students with EBD.  However, I ended up focusing a majority of my time on writing manuscripts.  I do realize that the development of a manuscript is related to research experience and is an important skill to learn in order to share the findings from research projects.  But, I also feel that I need to learn how to develop interventions, collect data, analyze data, and present the findings.

    I was hoping that I would gain a substantial amount of research experience during my internship at Johns Hopkins University with Dr. Sibinga.  Overall, I feel that I learned a great deal of information on how to analyze and pick measurement tools for a research project.  I was also able to practice my skills of cleaning and preparing data to be analyzed.  Unfortunately, I did not have an opportunity to collect data because the process was already complete.  In addition, I was not able to participate in analyzing the data.  Due to unforeseen circumstances, Dr. Sibinga lost her statistician that was going to analyze the data; therefore, delaying the process.

     I am still involved with the internship and providing assistance in analyzing the data collected from the Teacher Observation of Classroom Adaptation – Checklist (TOCA), survey.  However, I have spent a majority of the time cleaning the data and teaching myself, with the help of Dr. King-Sears, how to analyze the data.  I do not have a problem with teaching myself how to analyze the data, but I feel it would have been extremely beneficial for me to sit with an experience statistician and ask questions as we analyzed the data together.

     As I stated under Research Competencies, I believe I have gained research experience by creating opportunities for myself.  Through required classes I have capitalized on opportunities to produce and submit manuscripts for publication, and through my internship I have gain valuable experience.  I personally feel that I understand how to develop a literature review, synthesize data and information, develop a written manuscript, and present the information in a logical manner.  However, I feel that I lack the experience in developing an intervention, collecting and analyzing the data.  Through developing my own pilot research study I hope to gain the experience I feel that I need to successfully start and complete my dissertation.