Joe Leeder talks about his internship with BSLTRU

The University of the West of England advertised for students interested in undertaking a sponsored internship at a number of possible research facilities.  I applied for one of these internships at BSTLRU to get experience in a field of research that I found interesting, as well as boosting the credentials on my CV.  I was fortunate enough to be successful at interview and began my placement in August.  The hope was that I would experience many different aspects of research and working with different people during my time at the unit.

For the first two weeks I worked on a research technique called systematic reviewing - a way to gain an overview of all the research evidence into a particular topic.  After hundreds of papers from various resources are collected, it was my job to match each paper against carefully selected criteria. The systematic reviewing process is very time consuming and laborious. However it is worthwhile as the results allow researchers to understand what is already ‘out there’ in terms of evidence. It helps to determine what is missing and whether the research proposed is relevant. It was beneficial for me to see how this process of highlighting and understanding previous research is conducted in an academic environment.

LENA recording unit. This is worn in a vest/top by the child.

For the second two weeks I assisted Anna Blackwell, a student who is carrying out her PhD at the unit. Anna’s longitudinal study is looking at four language delayed children and aims to better understand the dynamic relationship between the child and the parents’ language. Whilst working with Anna, one of my tasks was to undertake a reliability check on some of the data she had collected from the children. This involved using a device called LENA (Language Environment Analysis) which captures audio for 16 hours and is worn by participants.

This audio was analysed using software which determines high conversational counts in 5 minute segments. I transcribed ten, five minute segments from the four different children and applied a series of codes which provided a range of linguistic data. Anna then checked ten percent of the analysis and I did the same for a transcript that she had completed.  This allowed her to obtain reliability statistics for this element of her study.

Working for Anna was particularly interesting; the coding process relied on my linguistic knowledge and helped to develop it, and it was really exciting to be working on a longitudinal project with speech delayed children. I think it’s really interesting to see how speech and language can develop over time and whether a change in the way adults engage with their children effects this development.

 

The research unit relies solely on grants and charities to fund projects. The third part of my placement was to read over and review a grant that was being processed to fund future research. Part of the skill of writing a grant application skill is to be able to write in clear, simple language. With this in mind, during my placement I was asked to summarise abstracts of papers in lay English. This enables a non-expert audience to understand more about the research which is undertaken, without having to worry about complex vocabulary. These lay summaries are then included in grant applications and on the unit web-site. Writing lay summaries wasn't my favourite task, although it was useful and interesting to be able to read some of the research that has already been written in the unit. It also improved my writing skills as I found it particularly hard to adjust the complex concepts to make them accurate.

Throughout the placement I learnt skills that will be invaluable to future work. Systematic reviewing has enabled me to develop a methodological approach to literature reviewing, and to be rigorous in critically assessing the evidence available. Reliability checking has taught me to be thorough, has improved my concentration skills and has allowed me to see how linguistics can be applied in the working world. Such skills will be transferable to any future career and I will use this experience of research to decide whether I want to go on to do study at postgraduate level.

Joe Leeder giving a presentation to the team at BSLTRU about his time there.

I am really grateful to have had the opportunity to have worked in such a friendly, yet professional environment. The work that is undertaken in the unit is designed to provide speech and language therapists with up to date evidence and methods to help those who are speech and or language impaired.  Providing methods and solutions to help others is the underlying theme at the research unit and is what makes such an enjoyable and rewarding environment to work in. I have really enjoyed learning about research and speech and language therapy and hope to further improve my knowledge in the area by conducting my third year thesis at the unit.