Being grateful for research subjects

Like Michelle said in her blog post, Knight's points on having a backup plan for when research does not go as planned are extremely helpful. It's very easy, especially in the proposal stage, to lean on the idea that the research will go completely as planned or that at the very least, enough data will be collected to justify the study in the first place. The reality is that people drop out of studies, data can be mishandled, and in general anything can go wrong! Our guest speaker this week reminded us that no one owes a researcher their time, and I think this mentality is important for planning a research project that deals with human subjects. It is easy to view our subjects as potential data warehouses, but in reality they are people with lives and more pressing matters than your project (sadly!). I think it's important to keep in mind that studies would not exist without the help of co-operative research subjects. Thinking of research subjects in this way has also helped me to write out the "ethics" portion of my proposal, as it caused me to put a lot of thought into how to justify asking students to participate in my study. Seeing a more "human" side to research has ultimately has made me a better potential researcher!