This continues our series of student reflections and analysis authored by our research team.
As the semester is winding down, here is an update on the current status and goals of tPP! Over the past two months, everyone has worked to construct mini-analyses papers on a chosen topic surrounding our database. Some members worked in pairs while others worked individually to assess trends that may be appearing within the database. The papers addressed several different factors we have coded for such as gender prevalence in terrorism, foreign affiliation and fatality, military/veteran status and its role in attacks, location prevalence, etc. We plan to start out next semester by presenting our papers and findings to the entire team as a reminder of all the great work we have achieved so far!
Speaking of the team, we are also excited next semester to welcome some new recruits! We have spent time recently reviewing our meeting agenda and drafting not a new, but a more explicit, and more concise codebook that will be extremely beneficial when catching the new members up to speed! Kicking off the new year, we will ultimately finish adding and coding cases, so we can continue to draw final analyses of patterns of taxonomy within our dataset. As we begin to move toward the final stages of our project, we aim to draft more literature, advertising the information presented in our data, and work to present our findings to outsiders at relative conferences!
As a member of tPP from the start, and a soon graduating senior, this experience has been eye-opening as much as it has been informative. Working with Dr. Loadenthal and the rest of the team has caused an interest in continuing research around the justice system and helped prepare me to keep to higher education in ways I would have never received without them. With tPP being one of the largest datasets of its kind, it has offered so many undergraduate students the chance to participate in research that while tasking, has been extremely rewarding. The project is mostly student-led has allowed us to learn and improve our skills in leadership, collaboration, research, statistical analyses, technical writing, and so many more. Many members have been on the team since the start and found their niche through this project and enjoy the chance to collaborate on a regular basis to adopt roles and goals as needed within our own mini projects and the larger project as a whole. This spring will be an exciting time for everyone as we move to our final stages but the time cannot come soon enough for our eager current and new members.
– Tia Turner