Working with our Parent-EPIQ project team as part of the 2021 CHILD-BRIGHT Summer Studentship Program, Amarpreet cleaned and analyzed data collected from a questionnaire sent to parents of children born very preterm and other key stakeholders about meaningful early childhood outcome measures. “Cleaning” data refers to removing incomplete or invalid entries from a data set. With assistance from the research team and a statistician, Amarpreet analyzed the results and wrote an abstract.
Here’s what Amarpreet had to say about the summer student experience:
“Being a CHILD-BRIGHT summer student totally changed my understanding of research. As a Life Sciences major, I automatically assumed research was about “hard science”, wearing a white coat and doing experiments in labs. I was introduced to a different world thanks to Parent-EPIQ and CHILD-BRIGHT. Over the summer, I worked under the supervision of Co-Principal Investigator Anne Synnes, who helped me better understand what it means to do patient-oriented research. I was blown away by the steps being taken to meaningfully engage parents and families in research decisions to improve quality of life.
I also benefited immensely from the CHILD-BRIGHT summer studentship training series. It included weekly activities like learning how to write plain language summaries of research articles and how to avoid jargon, which complemented my learning experience. Before the summer studentship, I took patient participation for granted and was unaware of the many ways it positively directs research. The program made me realize the importance of efficient knowledge translation from a research setting to a clinical setting. Many times, as individuals with a scientific background, we assume everyone understands scientific terminology. The ability to be able to translate research findings in a way that is easily digestible for the targeted population is a crucial skill to learn for patient-oriented researchers. I took patient participation for granted and was unaware of the many ways it positively directs research before becoming part of the project.
As I continue to work towards my goal of becoming a physician, I plan to implement everything I learned this past summer. I gained a new appreciation for patient-oriented research and am walking away with life experiences I did not know I would gain!”