The Benefits of Conducting Research Prepare Undergrads for Future Endeavors
Lexi Goodijohn shares her research experience
"I am so grateful for the experience of participating in the undergraduate research internship offered through the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. As an intern, I worked with Dr. Sample to look at how registered sex offenders believe their religiosity or spirituality deters them from committing further crimes when they did not before. I learned how to conduct a narrative analysis of life-course interviews. I was awarded a FUSE (Fund for Undergraduate Scholarly Experiences) grant for my research project and won an Honorable Mention for the Undergraduate Poster Presentation at the 2021 Student Research and Creative Activity Fair (RCAF)."
Molly Wirtz researched police officers' stress levels
During her senior year studying in UNOs School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Molly Wirtz completed an undergraduate research internship. In order to better understand police officers’ stress and perceptions of their current working environment, Wirtz developed and administered a survey to the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. After the data collection phase ended, she entered the data into SPSS and cleaned it. Then, working closely with nationally-renowned policing expert Justin Nix, Ph.D., she prepared this report.
Laramie Sproles talks about her research internship:
"The research internship through the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice gave me the opportunity to experience the research process firsthand. I learned about different statistical techniques and software, assisted with survey creation and data collection, and practiced preliminary data analysis. Like other internships, this research internship allows students to explore a future career path before making the decision to follow that path. In this case, this internship influenced my decision to continue my education and led me to apply for graduate school.”
Read what Clara Braun has to say about her research internship:
“For my internship, I was assigned to pull data from juvenile records at the Juvenile Assessment Center (JAC). I would examine records between a certain time frame, searching for and cataloging specific charges. In addition to that, I was fortunate to observe the assessment process the JAC uses to sentence juvenile offenders to diversion. The JAC doesn't use a one treatment for all formula. Instead, the juvenile's home life, academic situation, and psy-chological and emotional health are taken into account to determine sentencing. I was allowed to see and be part of the process that goes into gathering research and eventually writing an academic paper.”
Rachael Rief shares about her research internship experience:
“During my internship I assisted a professor with the analysis of data. I began the semester by cleaning and organ-izing raw data, and creating frequency tables using the data manipulation and analysis program SPSS. By the end of the internship I was able to use correlation tables to analyze and explain the data sets I had been working with throughout the semester. I now have a greater understanding of the time, effort, and complexity of a study and feel better prepared for graduate school.”
