Over the summer Eadie Simons, who will be starting the final year of her BSc (Hons) Sport & Exercise Science degree next month, has been participating in the University’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Scheme, a competitive bursary programme that supports the development of undergraduate researchers by pairing them with academic mentors. Eadie has kindly shared her experiences of collaborating with Dr Matt Bird on a research project:

“Over the summer I have been working with Dr Matt Bird to conduct a study as part of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Scheme (UROS). I was excited to be given this opportunity to gain first-hand experience of the research process, especially on an area of great interest to me. Our study aimed to investigate the relationships between mental toughness, sport-related wellbeing and stigma towards mental health and help-seeking.

Despite feeling quite daunting at first, seeing the next three months planned out, alongside weekly meetings with Matt made it seem a lot more manageable. However, it was not long before I was made to realise that the research process is not as straight forward as our research methods module makes it seem!  We spent the first two weeks working on the crucial but tedious task of compiling a database of contact details for the head coaches of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I teams for a select number of sports. After sending our initial contact email, we only received a small number of completed surveys. Although this was quite disheartening, we were soon able to recruit additional participants after deciding to widen the number of sports we reached out to.

This experience has allowed me to try my hand at everything from participant recruitment and data analysis, to writing a manuscript. Being able to do this prior to starting my final year dissertation has been very insightful and will hopefully benefit my work greatly, having improved my academic writing style and research skills. One of the main takeaways from this project was learning to remain open minded and adaptable. For instance, two of our hypotheses were unsupported by the data. This meant we had to broaden our search for related literature and propose new links between concepts in order to explain our results. We also asked Dr Patricia Jackman to join the project and share her expertise on the topic area. All of which helped me gain a much deeper understanding of both the content area and the research process.

Throughout this process, it was great to be able to apply the skills I have learnt over the first two years of my degree whilst also being introduced to new techniques such as moderation data analysis and using Qualtrics to build questionnaires. Despite starting this process feeling very much out of my depth, I have finished with greater confidence having seen the study go from conceptualisation through to a finalised manuscript. Participating in UROS has been an invaluable opportunity to gain first-hand experience of research outside of my degree and has left me with various ideas for future research should I decide to take on a master’s or PhD in the future.”

Congratulations to Eadie on being awarded a place on the UROS programme, and for being able to complete her project during such a challenging summer.

Update: Eadie’s project has been published as a paper in the Journal for the Study of Sports and Athletes in Education!
Simons, E.E. & Bird, M.D. (2022) Coach-athlete relationship, social support, and sport-related psychological well-being in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I student-athletes. Journal for the Study of Sports and Athletes in Education. doi.org/10.1080/19357397.2022.2060703

This is a fantastic achievement for an undergraduate student project – congratulations Eadie!