During graduate school, students are usually offered applied opportunities. What I love about applied psychology (e.g., evaluation, I-O psychology…) is that graduate students have the chance to bring their knowledge to a variety of industries — and built the value of data driven decision making. To me, that is priceless. Exposing the field of applied psych is great…and so is making others aware of all the great things can be done when something other than anecdotes are the decision making tool of choice.
So what’s my experience with this? I also had these great applied opportunities, and I started to realize that I was an advocate for my field. I had a new perspective about the entire experience — if my client walked away feeling like they wasted their time, I didn’t do a very good job.
My second to last semester I completed a needs assessment and process evaluation for a company in another state. This company is phenomenal — great idea that’s meeting a need, lean bottom line, and an office full of great people. Where’s the but? Well, it’s that data wasn’t driving their strategic planning. Needs assessment? What’s that? There I had it — an opportunity to BUILD the capacity of evaluation in this organization.
In short, the project went well — everyone learned a lot, services were revised, future planning was focused on data. But that’s all while you’re still there, right? In the back of your obsessive applied psych mind…you know this was one project, and the long lived method of luck and “educated” guessing (oxymoron’s make for good blog topics) could be revived and become the preferred decision making tool — again.
Data driven decision making. What does the data tell us? How do the statistics relate to what we are seeing financially? Your clients said they wanted this service…but was it a representative sample?? I felt like a broken record…because I hoped that between demonstration, dialogue, and bringing my client along for the experience would lead to an appreciation and PREFERENCE for data to inform their decisions.
Well, two months later I was in a follow up meeting…sitting in on an unrelated project…and I heard it:
“We need to make decisions based on what the data tells us. It can’t be what I like, or what makes sense to me. Let’s use the tools we have to make changes using data.”
…you know that moment when someone says their idea of an awesome day is binge watching Frasier and eating pizza rolls, and you’re like “…that’s hot.” Bam. There it was. The sexy side of being an advocate for our field.
You see, change is hard. Pushing for a better method (that isn’t always easier) can be a challenge. And hey, being a grad student is a special level of hell at times. Sometimes you want to drop the results and peace. You don’t always want to screw with Excel for hours to get something other than a canned report (but seriously, talk to me if it’s taking you hours to craft good viz). But at the end of it, you have an opportunity to see the results put into action. Your very presence is a disruption — a potential catalyst for change. The credibility of our field? It’s on ALL of our shoulders. So, the next time you’re burnt out, remember the potential to impact decision makers and the responsibility to your colleagues (oh, and call on them when you need help!).
