During my time as an undergraduate, I made it a key aim to develop my academic research skills in preparation for postgraduate study. My degree (BSc. Politics and Philosophy) almost exclusively used qualitative methods, and I therefore wanted to gain experience in dealing with quantitative data to allow me to broaden my studies. In my second year, I participated in the LSE GROUPS programme and in my third year I joined the first cohort of LSE Change Makers. Having only written papers of around 2,000 words since joining the LSE, I had little idea about what the world of academic research would be like, but I am pleased to say that both programmes’ thorough inductions allowed for a smooth transition from writing formative essays for my degree into moving into more original and long-form research.
LSE GROUPS was particularly successful at this and continued to hold workshops on different research methods throughout the term. As the name implies, the unique selling point of GROUPS is the ability to work with a small team of researchers on any topic within a broader theme, with students coming from all disciplines at the LSE. The broader theme of the year coincided with the 2018 LSE Research Festival in trying to update William Beveridge’s ‘Five Giants’, but each group was encouraged to use broad definitions of each social ill Beveridge had previously identified.
With this in mind, our group chose to examine the perceived success of microfinance initiatives in Bangladesh at improving the situation of women in poverty. This involved a statistical regression analysis that attempted to filter through the different variables that could alleviate poverty, which complemented the studies I had done in political science during my first year. The academic rigour of the regression genuinely helped me develop as a researcher, which made it all the more rewarding to complete. Our data was then presented graphically as part of a display at the LSE Research Festival that year.
Although LSE Change Makers also offered the opportunity to work as part of a larger group, I chose to work as part of a two-person team. The overarching theme was to investigate an issue around the school, which provided a unique opportunity to research a particular change we thought could benefit students and staff. We filled out an extensive application form and research proposal, in order to research the impact of summative class participation on student satisfaction. We hoped this would offer more data for LSE’s management to use in deciding whether to further implement summative participation. Unlike with GROUPS, the research performed with Change Makers was more directly relevant to the school, and our data collection primarily consisted of interviews with teachers and students to understand both perspectives about class participation. My research topic in Change Makers also provided the opportunity to learn more about the importance of research ethics. In order to conduct our research, we had to fill out the same form filled out by LSE academics before beginning our research, which forced us to consider how best we could anonymise our data and store interview responses.
Both GROUPS and Change Makers benefitted tremendously from the support network available at the LSE Eden Centre. The staff were all incredibly helpful in innumerable ways, but perhaps most memorable was the time spent one-on-one teaching students about different research methods and techniques. Although both projects inevitably developed group work skills, this allowed each researcher to further explore methods and techniques related to their own interests.
I would definitely recommend anybody who is interested in any form of research to join either GROUPS or Change Makers. Both projects have given me something tangible at the end of my undergraduate studies, and I hope that they offer a good example of the important contribution undergraduates can make to the school’s research community. In addition, they provide a great opportunity to diversify one’s understanding of different academic methods, which has been particularly helpful to myself in progressing onto postgraduate study. A key caveat to my recommendation however is that both projects can become time-consuming and end up as real commitments. Nobody wants to let other team members down whilst researching something everybody agrees to be important, and so I would recommend establishing expectations before beginning research with fellow group members. That said, both projects allowed enormous flexibility in considering how best to present our research and we were allowed great independence in carrying out the actual research.