Learning how to Process Data!
Author: Addison Miller | Major: Exercise Science | Semester: Fall 2024
My name is Addy Miller, and I am a senior majoring in Exercise Science. I am also a member of the College of Education and Health Professions Honors program. Currently, I am working with Dr. Abigail Schmitt who also works within COEHP as an educator and researcher, specializing in human gait. This blog post reflects the Fall 2024 semester and my experiences as a new researcher. Upon graduation I will be attending Officer Candidate School for the United States Marine Corps and pursuing a career in military aviation.
This past semester I started working towards answering my research question, “Does Health-Related Quality of Life Correlate to Dual-Task Cost in Walking for People with Parkinson’s Disease?” I believe that conducting this research will be immensely beneficial to improving rehabilitation and treatment plans for individuals suffering from Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Due to the nature of PD, both walking to verbal communication suffers, especially when done simultaneously, also known as a dual-task. My goal with this research is to better understand how dual-task walking and health-related quality of life are correlated. Results from this study have the potential to broaden our understanding of how physical and cognitive functions work together and how they are both affected by disease severity. By understanding that correlation, I hope that health professionals will be able to create more accurate and efficient programs to ensure the safety and well-being of individuals diagnosed with PD. Because there is not currently a cure to PD, it is our responsibility as members of the health care field to try our best to create hope and confidence for people like the PD community. Hopefully my research will aid in that endeavor.
My research journey started after I finished a course that was taught by Dr. Abigail Schmitt. I greatly admired her dedication to exercise science and how much she cared for her students. Shortly after that semester I asked her if she would be my mentor. To my joy, she accepted. We quickly started working together on finding a solid research topic. Because Dr. Schmitt specializes in human gait, it was difficult to find a population that she has not worked with. However, at the time she had just recently started a new research project of her own that needed someone to analyze neurodegenerative diseases. We both agreed that PD would be a great population to study because of lack of current information regarding their gait. We continued to work together to build a more specific research question and finally landed on finding a correlation between dual-task walking and quality of life.
In my opinion, the most enjoyable part of conducting research has been working with other people. I serve as a member of the MOVE Laboratory, which is run by Dr. Schmitt, but consists of other undergraduate students like me. Learning more about their specific research and their populations has made me a better researcher. Although we have different research questions, we work together as a team and help each other out as much as possible. That sense of comradery has made this past semester more enjoyable than I would have imagined.
However, there have been plenty of difficulties along the way. Human studies are already difficult to conduct, but when analyzing a small group such as the PD population, it makes it that much harder. Finding participants for my study has been a great challenge thus far. Luckily, my teammates and I have worked together to find ways to get more PD participants that we will implement at the beginning of next semester.
Scheduling has also been the source of many problems. Our study design requires multiple members of our team to travel outside of campus to conduct data collections. Finding times and locations that work for our team has been a consistent setback and has inhibited our ability to schedule more data collections. Meaning we have had less participants than expected. Since the semester has ended, we have already started looking at class and work schedules to make sure that this same problem does not follow us into the spring semester.
Even with the challenges, I have learned more about research than I could ever have imagined. Between Dr. Schmitt, my colleagues, and the research participants, I believe that I have grown exponentially as a researcher. I am incredibly excited for next semester to hit the ground running and make it even better than this past semester. Our goals for the spring semester include gathering more participants, analyzing all the data we have and will collect, and then processing that data into my thesis. I cannot wait to get one step closer to presenting my findings and completing my thesis!