Even though my Global Scholars project is a survey study rather than a purely qualitative one, the idea that everything is filtered through the researcher has stayed with me. I’ve come to see that “the instrument” isn’t only about interpreting interview transcripts, but about every judgment call I make in shaping, gathering, and making sense of data. My survey hasn’t gone out yet as I’m waiting until the end of the program so my cohort can reflect on the full arc of their summer, but I’ve already been the instrument in ways I didn’t expect.
To me, an “active role” in data collection means recognizing that I am never a neutral channel. The questions I choose to ask, the way I word them, the constructs I decide matter, as all of these are interpretive acts that shape what I’ll be able to find. I’ve exercised this most concretely not yet in my Global Scholars survey, but in my REU research, where I spent weeks hand-labeling conversations as “work-related” or not. There was no equation for that and so each ambiguous case (e.g., was studying data structures “work”? Or troubleshooting a personal laptop?) forced me to build and defend a definition case by case. I was the instrument and the consistency and biases of that dataset ran through my judgment. That experience taught me what it feels like to be the measuring tool, and it’s made me far more deliberate about how I’ll design my survey questions.
I notice real gaps between my own perspective, my cohort’s, and the theory I’ve read. My literature review frames intellectually demanding work through tidy constructs like cognitive load, motivation, engagement, but my cohort is more messy, as some thrive under pressure that I would find draining, and others define “demanding” in ways no scale I’ve read quite captures. My own perspective is shaped by being a researcher studying researchers and I run the risk of assuming my experience of demanding work generalizes when it may not. I also engage informally with our mentors, whose view of demanding work is shaped by decades I haven’t lived, and while they aren’t part of my survey, they’ve reshaped how I think about what I’m measuring.
For my survey, I plan to document why I chose each item, noting my assumptions before I see results, and keeping a reflection log so I can separate what the data says from what I hoped it would say. To ready the data for analysis, I’ll organize responses around my core constructs, flag ambiguous or incomplete answers early, and keep every processing decision written down. If this summer has taught me anything, it’s that the instrument works best when it documents itself honestly
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