Week 3 updates
Hi guys, it’s Claire here.
I am here to report on the progress that I have been making, three weeks into this Research Internship.
First of all, a little bit about my project. I am working with Dr Kate Faasse whose area of research is Health Psychology, more specifically with the placebo effect and pharmaceutical medicines. The project that I am working with her on involves exploring the implicit beliefs, perceptions and possible biases surrounding both generic and branded medicinal drugs. Generics are usually a fraction of the costs of branded medicines e.g. Coles-homebrand paracetomol vs Panadol. Even though generics have the same active ingredients, and should theoretically work as effectively as the branded medicines, there can be common misconceptions surrounding generics in terms of effectiveness, safety and severity of side effects. Previous studies have also shown that even when people explicitly believe (measured through self-report) that generics and branded medicines are equivalent to each other, they still report a lesser reduction in symptoms, or increased side effects when taking the generic compared to the branded medicine — this is otherwise known as the NOCEBO effect. So my project aims to explore these underlying implicit beliefs/biases through an Implicit Association Test, and examine how consistent these results are with past and future use/purchasing of generic and branded analgesics (pain relief medicine) i.e. actual behaviours.
I hope you’re still with me at this point — I tried to make the description as concise as possible! Now, onto what I have done so far.
I think the biggest accomplishment this week was making the IAT (see below for a screenshot).
I did make it from scratch, however it was using a Shiny web application IAT generator. Even though it wasn’t an amazingly impressive or particularly difficult feat, being the technologically inept creature that I am, I was quite proud of the finished product. I had created something. And it looked so …proper? As in it looked like a real experiment — like one of the ones that I did when I was in first year rushing through my SONA’s for credit points.
I remember grappling with the generator and getting increasingly frustrated as the pictures weren’t appearing on Qualtrics. However, after going back and forth with online tutorials , I finally succeeded and it felt SO rewarding. I remember being so excited, showing all my friends this thing that I had made. Kate was also very thrilled when I showed it to her at our weekly meeting — which made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. She then sent a link of the IAT to one of her colleagues in America who also responded quite enthusiastically. I thought back to when I heard Tom Denson say that Psychology Researchers seemed happier than researchers in other fields of science and medicine, and I had to agree.
Another thing that I finished this week that wasn’t as fun, was the Ethics Application for the study. Even though it was a little bit tedious i.e. filling out the form, editing and revising it with Kate, it was still interesting to experience this process. Specifically doing things such as filling out the participant information statements and debrief sheets as well as having a Researcher SONA account created for me, made me feel like a real researcher. It’s strange to think that I’m closer to the role of a researcher than an undergraduate student now. Is this what getting old feels like? :’(
Anyway, so those were all the updates on my project — I hope I didn’t bore you too much. Our next step is to finish all the questionnaires, put it all together on Qualtrics, upload it onto SONA and then start collecting data!
Looking forward to sharing the next update,
Claire
