Project Update: Early Career Trajectories

So, a lot has happened since our last blog post!

We have been busy interviewing respondees from our first data cohort and transcribing the results. We were pleased with our response rate of just under 25%; of course we would always hope for more but this at least gives us a starting point for our data. Our next step is to get together as a team and start to analyse these transcriptions to get a feel for the shape of the results to come.

Simultaneously we have been contacting a second data cohort of students from counselling and psychology courses who graduated from YSJ in the last three years. Instead of a telephone interview, we decided to approach this cohort with an introductory email and a link to an online survey, which we created using the ‘Select Survey’ software with the help of Charlotte Elwell (thank you Charlotte!). We hope that this online survey will return a number of responses; additionally we have used the survey to ask any respondents who are interested in further participation to provide a contact telephone number for us to then contact them for a telephone interview, with the aim of achieving more nuanced and detailed information about the career paths of our fellow students.

While all this activity has been going on, we have learned that our project manager, Jaqcui Akhurst, will be leaving us for a new adventure in South Africa. We are both very sad to see Jacqui go, and wish her all the luck for her future venture. Lynne Lacock will be taking over the reins and guiding us through the next stages of our research project.

Angie Fell and Sue Lambert, Student Researchers