Week 2 —Comprehensive reflections
This week I gradually got used to life in Edingburgh and had more courses. The course called Insight of Data left a deep impression on me, because my background is in statistics, and most of the content in the classes is not strange to me. And this course still deepened my insights and thoughts about data, which make me feel more confident about my future study.
As I read more and more reading about inequality and exclusion, I gradually have more thoughts about the final project. What I could do and what do I want to do? I began to reflect on myself and the answers gradually became clear.
The thing I want to do is to apply statistical methods and models to give some practical suggestions about certain social problems, or just find some useful aspects of those problems and try to research them. And the thing I could do is analyze data which is something I am familiar with. So the gap between what I want to do and what I could do is the deep learning of certain research topics which are about social inequality.
Now, it seems that I am interested in public health, especially mental health, and I hope to contribute to its development. However, it is a field that I just learned about some basic knowledge and never had deep learning and understanding of it. I think this is the direction I need to struggle next. Besides, I also have a deeper learning about economics and investment and if I choose them as a research topic, I could research something more deeply based on my undergraduate research. I even start to think if could I build some relationship between investment and mental health. hhhh. Just want to try all the possibilities.
I hope next week I could have some more concrete thoughts about the project. I will try to read more related literature and research to find my place.
Thank you for reading here. I hope everyone will have a great time next week.
It’s so interesting to hear how your background in statistics helps in the insights for data course, and that you would like to use it for social issues – I’m sure it would make a really cool project! Excited to read more about your process of figuring it out 🙂
I can see that your vision on your final project is already getting quite clear, especially on the methodological side. Very well done! Hope you could find a particular topic that you are interested in soon. Looking forward to your next blog.
Hi Qinyi, thanks for these explorations. How interesting to combine investment topics with mental health issues! Oftentimes the most original and insightful research projects come out of someone putting two things together that aren’t usually analysed together.
Perhaps you could brainstorm all the permutations for how investment and mental health could relate. For instance, what about the mental health of investment bankers, in the context of extreme working hours and job insecurity? This reading from Toolbox might be relevant: Ho, Karen. 2009. Disciplining Investment Bankers, Disciplining the Economy: Wall Street’s Institutional Culture of Crisis and the Downsizing of “Corporate America”. American Anthropologist 111(2): 177-189.
Or how about the attitudes of young people toward investing in their future? It seems there’s a trend that younger people don’t trust the stock markets very much and tend to have a smaller share of their assets there than do millennials and older generations. I know there’s a considerable amount of anxiety among young people about how to invest in their futures when property and stock markets feel so uncertain.
Or what about Social Impact Investment into mental health charities / social enterprises?
What else can you think of?
What methods would you use to study these? Which sound the most fun and important to you?