Research Stream: Lived Experience
Author: Isolina Busto Gilligan, BA International Psychology Student, Summer Programme for Undergraduate Research (SPUR) 2024 Intern, Department of Psychology, Maynooth University
This summer I participated in the Summer Programme for Undergraduate Research (SPUR) in Maynooth University. SPUR is an opportunity for undergraduate students to experience what it’s like to work and research in an academic setting. It takes place over six weeks and students work under the guidance of a researcher in the University while also completing a workbook to further hone their research and professional skills. My SPUR mentor was Dr Sadhbh Byrne of the Psychology Department. The project I worked on with Sadhbh was called PRISM (PRovision of Informal Support for Mental Health). This project, in collaboration with Mental Health Ireland and funded by Research Ireland is investigating the support given by young people to friends who are going through a tough time. The project was co-designed with an advisory group of young people aged 18-25 with lived experience of providing support to a friend. The project aims to discover the type of support given to friends, the experience of giving this support, and whether supporters perceive any need for support or resources.
Little research has been done on the type of support given by young people to their friends, and their experience with providing the support, so I was very excited to be a part of this project and to help increase knowledge of this important subject and to extend the body of research that is available. I was also excited to be a part of this project because of the co-design aspect, meaning that everything in the project (from the wording of the questions, to the way it was advertised to the public) was designed and decided on by young people with actual lived experience of supporting a friend going through a tough time, making the project more accurate and relevant to the young people it was researching.
My main role in the project was to investigate research dissemination strategies and to look for effective ways of disseminating findings to a young audience. Dissemination involves communicating research findings to target audiences. We wanted the results of the project to reach its main target audience (young people ages 18-25), rather than only reaching academics and experts in the field of mental health (people who mainly read and have access to academic journals). We wanted others to be interested in the results of the project and for the research to have an impact on young people in particular. To reach this goal, I started by doing a literature review on youth dissemination strategies and searched for dissemination case studies. These case studies will be used as examples and ideas, both good and bad, to guide the development of the dissemination strategy the PRISM project will use. I also investigated important considerations for dissemination, and identified relevant frameworks as well as facilitators and barriers to effective dissemination. I then presented my findings to the research team and received feedback and support on my work. Lastly, when I had finished my research, I developed co-design workshop materials based off my findings to be used in a workshop with the advisory group so they can decide on the best dissemination strategy for the PRISM project findings. I also got the unique opportunity to visit Mental Health Ireland’s head office and learn about the work they do there, which was very interesting and a nice change of pace.
As well as working on dissemination strategies and the literature review, I assisted with participant recruitment. Participant recruitment is a vital part of research, but few people get to learn how it works before doing it themselves in their own projects. I now have a clearer idea of the amount of work involved in participant recruitment, which is something people might overlook when planning a research project to begin with. I also learned about other aspects of research such as ethics and funding thanks to my mentor Sadhbh who explained these to me and gave me guidance throughout the project. I feel I improved not just my research skills, but also my professional skills and my ability to work as part of a team and build professional relationships, which is something that is important in any job. I enjoyed this experience and the opportunity to do something different. I enjoyed working on the co-design materials and presenting my findings after doing all the work and putting in so much effort. My findings were presented in a research poster in the SPUR symposium which took place in October. I especially enjoyed creating and designing the poster as I got to use my own creative flair while also putting my research findings to the test by using some of the effective dissemination strategies that I had found.
This internship not only helped me to improve on my professional and research skills but also gave me a great insight into academia and the ins and outs of running a research project. I gained a great understanding through this work and had the rare opportunity (for undergraduates) to peek behind the curtain of what lecturers and tutors do day-to-day when they’re not teaching us students!
