Ayyyy, spent this week preparing materials for our experiment and getting documents ready to submit for IRB approval. Took a hot sec earlier this week to figure out one technical aspect of our experiment since we don’t have access to the service that is typically used to run it. Had to problem solve and work with what we had. It made me realize that in research, often times when you’re doing something new that other researchers haven’t done before, you’ll have to think, make something yourself, think more, improve upon it and, of course, test it out. Then, make further improvements. And the exciting thing is—the thing you make isn’t even the end goal; its purpose is to fulfill just that one part of your experiment, which has much greater implications!

I did get to participate in Joey and Ramzy’s mock study on Monday. It was a good experience to see how they conducted their study, and I also obtained a copy of their consent form for participants, which I later tailored to Isabelle and I’s study. While Joey and Ramzy’s study mostly consisted of the researchers monitoring the participants watch videos and complete forms, I think Isabelle and I’s study will require more researcher involvement, at least for the initial setup. We did try our own hand at a mock study on Friday, which didn’t turn out the best. Lesson learned—obtain participant confirmation after each step and give instructions verbally in addition to in the chat box to facilitate more complete understanding for everyone.

Downloaded SCLITE to perform the word error rate analysis portion of our study but had issues compiling it because some of the code wasn’t compatible with the newer macOS version. Another reason I hate Apple with a passion, but I do feel lucky to have access to a mac in the first place. I was surprised that no one else on the internet seemed to have run into the issues that my partner and I did with the compilation (Isabelle also has the newer macOS version), but I guess it also makes sense given that SCLITE has been around for quite some time and the people who are currently using it probably have been using it for a long time. Anyway, had to go in and look at the code myself and it was just trial and error from there, changing things here and there until all errors were eliminated. I think the software works as it should now but we’ll see next week.

That’s a wrap on week 4. Stay tuned for the midpoint!