Christina Varghese, Class of 2022
Author: Christina Varghese | Major: Sociology
My name is Christina Varghese, and I am a Sociology major in Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences on a pre-med track. Working with Dr. Brittany Hearne in the Sociology department, I have laid the foundation for my Honors College research thesis during the Fall 2021, and will complete the work during Spring 2022. The aim of my research is to explore how perceived threat toward COVID-19 differs across the intersections of age with race/ethnicity and gender.
The disruptions produced by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic over the past two years has created a need for new and essential research. Studying how different social groups perceive threats related to the COVID-19 pandemic will create a basis for identifying possible causes of health inequalities, health mandate compliance, and mental illness during a global health crisis. In order to address gaps in the current literature, I will examine how the intersection of age and race/ethnicity impact perceived threat of COVID-19, as well as how the intersection of age and gender impact the perceived threat of COVID-19. This will be accomplished by running bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses on the American Trends Panel (ATP) national survey data collected by the Pew Research Center.
The journey toward planning for my honors research started during my sophomore year Fall 2019 when I took Social Research and Methods with Dr. Hearne. This course was immensely useful for understanding what research looks like in the field of sociology, and I was impressed by Dr. Hearne’s organization in class and clear communication style. After browsing the Sociology faculty directory and realizing that Dr. Hearne’s research interests included mental and physical health, I visited her office hours to discuss the process of doing a thesis in medical sociology. Because my plan was (and is) to pursue a career in medicine, I knew that I wanted to do research in medical sociology, a subdiscipline which examines the social factors which impact health and illness.
As junior year rolled around and I began working on my research proposal in earnest, I reached out to Dr. Hearne to ask if she would be willing to work with me as my honors thesis director. She graciously agreed and helped me fine tune my topic.
Deciding on a topic was a matter of narrowing down my interests to match the available data. I wanted to research something within medical sociology, and I knew I wanted to find a topic which was relevant, useful, and interesting to me. By this point it was early 2021, and the COVID-19 pandemic was in full-swing. Naturally this inclined me towards an interest in epidemiology. After perusing the university databases for sociology articles concerning COVID-19, I took interest in the variations in attitudes toward COVID-19, having seen the impacts of this in media and in my personal experience. Through further reading and frequent consultation with Dr. Hearne, I narrowed down my topic to perceived threat toward COVID-19 across the intersections of age with race/ethnicity and gender.
After identifying a main topic, I began working through a literature review. After compiling as many relevant articles as I could find, I created a spreadsheet listing the citations, data, methods, and variables from each study. This organized format helped to clearly identify what had previously been studied and where there were gaps in the literature. This allowed me to further narrow down that I would be examining the intersection of age with race/ethnicity and the intersection of age with gender.
Once the literature review was drafted, my focus then shifted to the statistical analyses. Dr. Hearne guided me through the basics of how to work with datasets using the statistics software SAS and helped me review how to read and interpret statistical findings. As the Fall 2021 semester came to an end, I programmed the necessary lines of code to isolate relevant data from the dataset and run the statistical tests.
In the Spring 2022 semester, I will continue my research by running the programmed data through SAS, interpreting the findings, and compiling and writing out the results. As I polish my final research paper, I will also prepare to present my research in late April at the Southwestern Social Science Association Conference, where I have been accepted as a student presenter.
The research process thus far has shown me the importance of adapting as I learn. I entered this project with certain expectations of how my research would look, but as I have learned more about the topic, it makes sense for me to adjust my research question and methods to shift accordingly. When new opportunities arise, concerning either conference presentations or fresh datasets, exploring and seizing each chance creates a deeper understanding and more meaningful experiences.