Being a PROSPECT Research Assistant (during a global pandemic!)
Written by Rebecca Crook, Research Assistant, PROSPECT project
Honestly, not the title I’d have imagined for my first blog post had you asked me at the beginning of 2020 – yet, here we are. I began working as a Research Assistant on the PROSPECT project in October last year. Oh the heady days of commuting, sharing an office space, and seeing people in physical form, rather than in a two-dimensional virtual world that now feels all too familiar and normal; but, apparently, this is the ‘new normal’. I am writing this on the 23rd September, 2020, a day that marks exactly six months since the first national UK lockdown was announced due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. This blog shares my personal experience of working as a Research Assistant on the PROSPECT project over the last six months, and how we have had to adapt our working style and develop alternative plans to continue progressing the project during this challenging and uncertain time.
What is the PROSPECT project and what does a Research Assistant do?
‘PROSPECT’ is the ‘PRevention Of Suicide in Prison – Enhancing aCcess to Therapy’ project (acronyms, the “holy grail of academia”; see PhD Comics #1100 for a light-hearted take). Our research consists of four studies designed to help improve the quality of suicide prevention treatment for patients in prison. The project boasts the collaborative expertise of co-applicants from numerous institutions (see ‘Meet the team’ on the project website homepage) and a core team of five, all based at the University of Manchester, consisting of: myself (Rebecca – Qualitative Research Assistant), Dave (Lived Experience Research Assistant), Tim (Research Fellow and Programme Manager), Dan (Chief Investigator), and Yvonne (Clinical Research Fellow). The Research Assistant role involves providing support to the Chief Investigator and Research Fellows where required, and managing day-to-day activities such as: preparing applications for ethical review; corresponding with key contacts at other organisations and institutions; participant recruitment; data collection; and data analysis.
The impact of the COVID-19 regulations on PROSPECT
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic we were preparing to begin work for our first study that aims to develop a ‘Therapy Engagement Resource’ for prisoner participants, to support access and engagement in the PROSPECT therapy programme in prison. This work involves coproducing a resource, or set of resources, alongside community-dwelling service users who have personal experience of suicidal thoughts or behaviours during a period of imprisonment. We had spent time preparing workshop schedules, booking an appropriate and consistent location to meet with our service user participants (no mean feat!), and ensuring all necessary ethical approvals were in place. Fast forward six months, we are all working from home and unable to access the community-dwelling and prison participants required to conduct our research, therefore speedily developing alternative plans for data collection to avoid a substantial delay to the project. Although we will see a delay to our work in prison we managed to gain approval to conduct some socially distanced research under the new guidelines, meaning telephone interviews rather than face-to-face methods, and thanks to the collaborative efforts of the team this work is progressing well. We have even noted benefits of this new approach, where telephone interview methods have allowed us to recruit nationally providing a wider range of experiences and perspectives for our analyses.
The impact of the COVID-19 regulations on my personal experience
Milo (in case it wasn’t clear) is a cat
Remote working has its highs and lows; some days I am quite happy that my inter-city commute has been reduced to an inter-room commute, although walking downstairs doesn’t have the same hustle and bustle that I often enjoyed being a part of when travelling between Liverpool and Manchester. I also miss seeing the rest of the team; no offense to my new office buddy Milo, but his understanding of psychological interventions and research ethics is limited, and his tendency to walk across my keyboard can be quite distracting. Zoom has been a great aid in supporting regular team meetings and virtual contact, but it’s just not the same.
We have been trying to organise an in-person meeting for the last couple of months, but with the ever-changing restrictions on social contact it seems increasingly difficult to plan. We are now seeing local lockdowns in the North West and being encouraged to work from home for the foreseeable, so it’s likely that this ‘new normal’ working dynamic will continue into next year.
I must state that I feel incredibly fortunate and thankful to be in a position where I have the stability of a relatively long fixed-term contract and am able to continue working safely from home, and appreciate that this is not the case for many other people working in academia, and in other sectors. I have seen friends and family affected by job losses and uncertain furlough arrangements, so whilst I write about the difficulties I have faced, I don’t intend to make comparisons between experiences; each understandably coming with its own challenges. Working on a large research project and navigating it through this extraordinary situation has been a learning experience. Whilst I sometimes feel isolated and lonely, and miss the excitement of working at a large university in a busy city, I have appreciated the opportunity to reflect on my working style and behaviours, and have hopefully made some improvements that will continue as I desist from lockdown into the next ‘new normal’ (for more on this, you can read Dave’s blog: ‘Desisting from lockdown’).
About Rebecca Crook:
Rebecca is a Research Assistant at the University of Manchester, currently working full-time on the PROSPECT project. She has worked at the university in the Division of Psychology and Mental Health for the last three years on projects around offender health, and postgraduate researcher mental health and wellbeing. Rebecca’s higher education background is multi-disciplinary; her undergraduate and taught postgraduate degrees are both in Criminal Justice, and she is in the final stages of writing up her PhD in Public Health. At the moment, Rebecca’s work on PROSPECT is focussed on developing a model of how the PROSPECT intervention will work in the prison environment.
Outside of work (and finishing her thesis), Rebecca usually enjoys socialising with friends and family, playing netball, and going to gigs. For the last six months she has found light relief in gardening in the sunshine, reading more, socialising (mostly through a computer screen), and lots of episodes of Ru Paul’s Drag Race. I mean… a lot.