• Question: What challenges have you faced in your research?

    Asked by Oxi to Jack, Gem, Jermaine, Michelle, Steve on 14 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Steven Brown

      Steven Brown answered on 14 Jun 2017:


      Getting participants to take part is always tough – they have lives, so getting them to take their time out is difficult. It can also take a while to get your results out there as the process of writing them up and having them checked by other experts is a challenge. It takes ages.

      I guess I am quite impatient. It can be useful at some stages of a project, but not in most. Patience is a virtue.

    • Photo: Jack barton

      Jack barton answered on 14 Jun 2017:


      Technology! It is a wonderful thing when it works but sometimes my watches like to break inexplicably in all manner of ways. For example, the strap may fall off, they might become waterlogged from someone washing their hands, they can refuse to beep at the right times, or the buttons may just stop working or get stuck. Other than that I think planning sufficient time is a difficult thing to get just right for any piece of research. You need to be aware of how long it can take to recruit participants, deal with problems which may arise, and plan extra time for the additional problems which might rear their ugly heads. As a PhD student this is something I learning as I progress. One specific challenge I have faced recently is how to carry out a particular research study with limited resources. The final study of my PhD involves reducing the hours sleep which participants have by about 2 hours (e.g. 6 hours each night instead of 8) and assessing a number of mood and other mental health variables. The sleep laboratory at Manchester doesn’t have the resources to carry out this type of study but I have found a way to get around this through using a novel design. It is still something I am working through but it has been exciting to have to think of ways to deal with a brick wall which could have stopped my research in its tracks.

    • Photo: Jermaine Ravalier

      Jermaine Ravalier answered on 15 Jun 2017:


      Because I work with large organisations, one of the hardest thing is getting access to the organisation, so networking essentially. Other than that I don’t think my job is particularly hard – once I have access via particular networks, recruiting participants is easy (e.g. just this summer I’ve collected data from over 15,000 public sector workers).

      Then I guess some of the analysis is pretty hard – I often get colleagues to help with the analysis.

    • Photo: Michelle Jamieson

      Michelle Jamieson answered on 15 Jun 2017:


      Getting people to take part is always hard, and I work with people who really aren’t very well. Their stories are usually very hard, and it can be very distressing, for them, and the researchers.

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