Selecting Research Population

Questions about the mental and physical health of individuals who have experienced trauma has been a topic of interest that has recently started to gain more attention. Some areas of focus include the extent of a person's trauma, the effect of trauma on future mental and physical health, and the impact trauma has on an individual’s interactions with others thier ability to form new relationships. For my research, I decided to focus on the 10 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and the effects they have on college students. To get a successful pool of participants I needed to decide what information I needed, which groups of students would give me that information, and how I would receive the information from these groups.

To start off the search, I had to decide what group of people would be the right people to to collect data from in order to obtain the information I needed to conduct my research. The questions I was exploring were "How is the mental health of students who have had 3 or less ACEs, and how is the mental health is of students who have had 4 or more ACEs?". There is a difference in these two categories because previous studies have shown that people who have had 4 or more ACEs have increased health issues, physical and mental. Another question I was looking to explore was, "Do all student participants' say their mental health affected their studies?". The last question I wanted to explore was "How does their mental health affect the relationships with their peers, teachers, family members, friends, etc.?".

To get the correct pool of participants I had find the best way to reach out to individuals who fit my studies criteria. Getting participants from all different majors was the first thing I thought of doing because it would give us a range of people from all differing majors. Another idea I had for creating the participant pool was getting participants from all different years in college. My mentor and I decided that a great way to get this pool of people would be to use participants from general classes that everyone needs to take. There are always freshmen enrolled in these courses, but a lot of upperclassmen still need to take general classes to get all of their requirements to graduate. Since we had decided on our participant pool , the next part of the research process is to find out what is the best way for participants to give us the information we need.

My mentor and I decided that a survey would be the best way to get our data. The survey asks participants multiple questions about themselves. One of the questions is, "Have they ever been diagnosed with depression or anxiety and at what age they were diagnosed?" Another question asks how they think their mental health has affected their academic performance, and how they think their mental health has affected their relationships. Once our pool of participants fills out our survey, our next step is to compile and analyze the data.