Southwest Psychological Association Conference Presentation
Author: Gavin Miller | Major: Biology, Public Health | Semester: Spring 2025
My name is Gavin Miller, and I am a senior majoring in public health and biology completing honors requirements through the College of Education and Health Professions. Throughout the past two years, I have been working with the DREAM (Diversity Research in Enhanced Access for Minorities) Lab under the direction of Dr. Ana Bridges, Professor and Director of Clinical Training for the department of Psychological Sciences. This semester, I completed data collection and analysis for my honors thesis entitled “Understanding the Impact of Language Barriers and Visit Duration on Caregiver Satisfaction in Pediatric Primary Care,” presenting this project at the Southwest Psychological Association and at the COEHP Research Symposium. Regarding future pursuits, I will start medical school at the Alice Walton School of Medicine this coming July.
The timeline for my research and honors thesis project was relatively straightforward. Initially, I found the DREAM Lab after speaking with upperclassmen that worked in the lab and had excellent experiences with Dr. Bridges as their thesis mentor. After hearing that the lab focused on mitigating disparities in healthcare, I quickly applied to the lab, interviewed with one of the GAs, and started working on various projects with them the summer after my sophomore year. As a junior, I began meeting with Dr. Bridges about potential research topics. After reading many published works and examining past projects from the lab, I decided to merge my interest in pediatric medicine with health disparities and examine how language differences and duration of visit affect the perceived quality of healthcare for caregivers of pediatric patients at a local clinic.
Upon finalizing a topic, I began a broad review of relevant literature. My mentor and I found that there was work examining the impact of visit duration and work examining the impact of language barriers on primary care satisfaction; however, there was little to no literature that looked at visit duration as a mediating factor for the influence of language barriers in the doctor’s office. After finalizing the study design, my mentor and I decided that I’d be collecting data in the form of demographic and Likert-type surveys administered to caregivers of pediatric patients at the Community Clinic in Springdale, AR. I would take a Spanish-speaking research assistant with me on data-collection days to ensure delivery of these surveys to both English- and Spanish- speaking caregivers in the waiting room of the clinic. Upon completion of the survey, each participant would be compensated $5 (funded through the Honors College Research Grant). My mentor was instrumental in helping me finalize this design, and that research assistant, Liz Vazquez, was essential to the success of the project.
The most challenging piece of my thesis was the approval process from both the clinic and the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the University of Arkansas. Although I submitted everything the summer before my senior year, I didn’t receive final approval until the following January because I underestimated the hoops that one must jump through when working with personal health information. Because I would be surveying patients directly and gaining access to their personal health information, approval from the clinic took multiple meetings with clinic administrators. From the University IRB side, I went through a round of edits for small mistakes, but these also took a few months to reach final approval. Although we didn’t start data collection until the end of January, myself and the RA collecting data with me devoted 3+ hours to this project each week, completing collection and coding for satisfaction data about a week before Spring Break. After this was completed, my Dr. Bridges helped me code visit duration and extra demographic information through the clinic’s Electronic Medical Record.
Ultimately, my mentor and I completed statistical analysis and poster creation right before I presented this data at the Southwest Psychological Association Conference in Little Rock. Presenting this project with other research assistants in the DREAM Lab was an excellent experience, and I learned a lot about how poster presentations work on the regional level. I also had the opportunity to present this project at the COEHP Honors Research Symposium, which served as my honors thesis defense. This project examined public health topics through a study design often employed in psychological science, and presenting my data in both spaces was beneficial for me academically.
Overall, my honors thesis project reaffirmed my passion for equitable and accessible healthcare and made me more confident in my ability to pursue similar projects in medical school. Although these projects will come from a more clinical lens, many of the themes that I saw through my results will help me build studies that will more effectively serve the populations I’ll examine. I feel exceptionally grateful to the Honors College, Dr. Ana Bridges, Liz Vazquez, and the entire DREAM lab for their support in this endeavor. I’ve learned so much about research and healthcare, and I will cherish this experience as I begin medical school in a few short months.