Real world experience as a Research Assistant: reflections from Anna Freud interns
As the Anna Freud internship programme draws to a close for 2024, CORC and the wider Applied Research and Evaluation team at Anna Freud enjoyed presentations from our six interns on this three-month funded placement at Anna Freud, reflecting on their experiences.
Their successful applications required them to have an undergraduate degree in psychology, the social sciences or a related field. To be in the 2nd or 3rd year of their degree or have equivalent experience (e.g., 12 months’ experience in a researcher role). Many of them reflected that the appeal of this placement included our open values toward diversity, making this accessible and inclusive for individuals who often experience additional barriers in pursuing research careers, such as being from a minoritised ethnic group, having lived experience of mental health difficulties, being disabled and/or care experienced.
All of them were keen to learn about research in the real world and contribute to a real world impact. They benefitted from experiencing the different stages of a research timeline through the projects they worked on, and overall the experience helped them to solidify their interest and future direction, and to gain confidence. They also commented that it was much less daunting and sociable than they expected working with research professionals, easing any anxieties they might have had, and they learnt to work in effective ways, with autonomy.
Some key highlights from their time has been gaining learning or hands-on experience on:
- Improving their qualitative, qualitative and content analysis skills
- Paper screening
- R coding
- Systematic review
- Using a logic model for providing a framework for planning and evaluation
- Advanced strategies for literature searching and journal review
- Being able to challenge and critique, and identifying gaps in current research
- Ethical application
- Applying equity, diversity and inclusion
- Applying the Lundy model for participation of young people, ensuring children’s rights can be heard
- CV writing for research roles
Some of the projects they worked on during their time at Anna Freud were: Image Based Measures, Perinatal Mental Health Needs Assessment, National Autism Trainer Programme, Your choice, BeeWell, the Adoption and Attachment research study and more. They also said they really benefitted from being in the room with CAMHS professionals and the challenges they face.
Ashton Ferguson specifically worked with CORC to produce material for our recently launched Modular Pupil Surveys, within our Wellbeing Measurement for Schools service, which are free for schools to use.
Ashton said:
This comparators information was referenced in each of our booklets for teachers and can be found here on our website, so teachers could take scores from their school and measure against other schools’ data, supporting them to interpret and understand their pupils' survey results. For Ashton, this involved searching for existing survey data that pupils' results could be compared to, summarising this, and then presenting it in a format that was appropriate and accessible for teachers. Ashton said she was “proud to see this go live, and knowing that it is freely available is really rewarding.”
Whilst she gained support and guidance from the team where Ashton could ask questions as required, she said she found “the most helpful thing was learning by doing, and really appreciated the level of independence and autonomy I was given. Through working with CORC, I have also learned more about how to decide which surveys or outcome measures to use, taking into consideration a range of factors such as the age and reading comprehension of the child, and the length of time required to complete these. Again, this will be really helpful for me when thinking about research design, or in direct work with children and young people". Through working with us Ashton can see how powerful the deliberate use of outcome measures can be in the therapeutic alliance.
Not only has this three month period been a well enjoyed experience for these great individuals, and opened up many opportunities for their further study and career considerations, but Anna Freud and CORC have benefited from their contribution.
Thank you Ashton, Erin, Grizelda, Mackenzie, Wumi and Zouletta – we look forward to seeing where your future work goes.
