October has been a very busy month for the PTG lab because we have been conducting our interventions for American high school students. Back in June, Dr. Taku collected data from high schools in Japan, so now we are expanding this study to the USA. A very exciting process that has been in the works since the 2011-2012 academic year!
So far, we have gone to three different high schools. All of these visits have been extremely successful. We have reached out to high school teachers and they have graciously allowed us to use their class time to administer “pre-test” surveys that assess the types of “impactful life events” that students have experienced. After we administer the surveys, we give high schoolers a presentation, and then thank them for allowing us to visit their class. We will be returning next month to administer the “post-test” surveys, and then the fun part of data coding and analyzing comes!!
It was really great to be able to talk to high school students. One of my favorite parts was the “ice-breaker” right after we introduce ourselves because we want to make students comfortable with us before they take our questionnaire. We had them imagine that they were stranded on an island and they could only choose one album to listen to for the rest of their lives. We asked them which album they would choose, and it was quite comical to hear their responses. Needless to say, we learned a little bit about the musical taste of high school students today, and hopefully they took something away from our presentation and the overall experience of being part of a research study. We are looking forward to returning to each of these high schools to administer the post-test!
I think that the students seemed very excited when they learned that this was the first time anyone did a study like this with high school students in the USA. We, in turn, are very excited to share the results that we have found in a few more months time!
FF-PTG LAB 