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Raga Bhagavathi, Week 3

This week consisted of the same thing: I met with people and collected data and then went into the office to enter the data into their program. The postdoc, Nick, wasn’t in the office this week so it was definitely a good move to write down all the data-entry steps last week when he taught me how to do it. Unfortunately the computer that I normally work on was being super weird and malfunctioning so I had to work in Nick’s office on his computer. I entered all of the data for people’s questionnaires and I’ll insert a picture below:
There are two multiple-choice questionnaires: one is a peer relationship questionnaire which consists of questions mostly pertaining to interactions with others, and the second one is called an SRS form and has to do with a subject’s individual behaviors. Test subjects have to fill out both questionnaires and then I have to put in the data. For the peer relationship questionnaire each question has options a-d and I enter the data as numbers 1-4. There are also questions such as public/private school, interest and hobbies, and AP/Honors classes. Each type of interest/hobby falls into a specific category which corresponds to a certain number, and the same goes for AP/Honors classes. For the SRS form, each question has options 1-4 so that’s just how I enter that data. Since I’m working on a desktop and I have to simultaneously be looking at two or three different pieces of paper in front of me I messed up quite a few times which was honestly pretty frustrating because entering 30 responses and then realizing you did it in the wrong form only results in having to delete everything you just filled in and moving into the other spreadsheet. But it’s all okay because I finished and double checked that everything was where it was supposed to be! I unfortunately wasn’t able to enter the data from the game because although I was following all of the steps, one of the components didn’t show up on the form and I didn’t want to risk messing anything up so I just decided to wait for Nick to come back next week. In general already my work here has been so fascinating and I’ve loved it, but I’ve definitely been frustrated at times because I have to do a lot of planning by myself to meet with people and interview subjects which means I have to work from home and during the evenings/weekends a lot more than would be optimal. However, I definitely think so far it’s been a good learning experience/development of a life skill. On another note, Dr. Lewis comes back in about a week or so, so hopefully he’ll give me some more office work to do when he returns!

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