Megan Narveson

HONRS 475
Dr. Leah White
April 21, 2024
Research Application Reflection
In all honesty, I have never been interested in research. Finding research articles related

to my topic, then reading them and trying to decipher their findings was a tedious process that I

dreaded. That’s why it took me so long to pursue research application opportunities for this

competency; I simply didn’t want to do it.

In a meeting with Leah, she nudged me to get out of my comfort zone and be involved in

real research. I reluctantly agreed simply because of my need to fulfill this competency for the

honors program. Leah connected me with another honors undergraduate student who was starting

research related to mental health and college athletes. This topic piqued my interest as I am a

cross country and track athlete here at MSU and know the mental battles of being an athlete are

often overlooked. The first step of this process was meeting with Dr. Albers, the professor who

agreed to work with us on this project. In this meeting, we discussed our ideas and the necessary

process involved in producing research. Alayna came up with the research question based on her

past experiences of being a division III hockey goalie. As athletes, Alayna and I are both

passionate about mental health and wanted to hear other athletes’ experiences and ideas for

positive change. After finalizing our research question, we created profiles on IRB and submitted

a proposal for our research. The only problem that we ran into with IRB is that I accidentally

made the mistake of creating an account with the federal branch instead of the state portal, but

the approval process itself went smoothly. We also made accounts on Qualtrics, where we

created our survey.

 Dr. Albers and Alayna played the main role in creating the survey, although we talked

through important survey techniques and questions in a team meeting. We discussed the

importance of having open-ended questions to get specific thoughts and feedback from our

participants. However, the questions must be specific enough, so the participants don’t go on any

unrelated tangents. Our survey included questions regarding personal mental health experiences,

resources, and potential changes for improvement. The question that we primarily focused on

was “where do you feel change is needed within the world of collegiate athletics when it comes

to the aspect of mental health?”

To begin the process, I was tasked with compiling a list of all Division III coaches in

Minnesota and Wisconsin. To do so I found a list of all the schools in this category and made a

checklist of all the programs they offered. I then went to every school’s website and wrote down

the head coach’s emails for each sport. I sent this information to Dr. Albers and Alayna. Alayna

sent our survey via email to each of the coaches with a description of what our research was

about and asked for their team’s participation.

After a few weeks, our research team met to discuss the results of the survey. Before this

meeting, we each looked at the results individually and wrote down common trends and key

phrases from each response. Then we met as a group and compared our results and consolidated

our findings into several common themes such as conversation, outreach, promotion of

resources, creation of resources, and coach/staff education. Most of our results were consistent

with each other, but when going through it was beneficial to consider whether the responses fit

into several groups at once. Final categories were determined by the themes that we found to be

most common throughout the responses. These represented repetitive ideas present in the

responses and helped us gain an idea for where improvements can be made in mental health
awareness among Division III sports. Since I want to work as a coach in athletics it is beneficial

to know what resources student athletes feel are missing in terms of mental health awareness. I

learned that one of the biggest things coaches can do is educate themselves, know how best to

handle situations regarding mental health topics, and reach out to their athletes. According to our

findings, athletes want outreach. With all the responsibilities that are placed on them as high-

level athletes they often feel weak needing to ask for help, and it is helpful when coaches can

help carry this burden by checking in on them first. Listening and caring is an amazing quality to

have as a coach. It is a quality that athletes will notice and appreciate.

To showcase our findings, we are scheduled to present at the URS on April 18th. Our

presentation was very eye-opening to the amount of research that goes on at MSU alone. It was

fun to hear about other people’s studies and what they were passionate about. I was also very

surprised by how easily our information flowed when we were presenting. I typically get pretty

nervous during presentations, but since this was something, I was so familiar with and passionate

about it wasn’t hard to talk about. Alayna and I also discussed the possibility of creating a

podcast to discuss our findings and relating it to some personal experiences. This has been

difficult to piece together since we are both so busy with school and graduating at the end of this

semester.

Although it was a lengthy process, I was able to continue learning about the research

process and apply my current knowledge as well. In my research methods and statistics class, I

learned a lot about different types of research, including qualitative versus quantitative data, pros

and cons of using surveys, methods of statistical analyses, and how to write a research paper.

This knowledge helped me better understand and contribute to our research project. I was able to

use this information in our qualitative analysis of the data and understand the decisions we were
making regarding the survey and what we were looking for in our results. Furthermore, having a

foundational knowledge of research helped give me more confidence when speaking with people

more experienced than me.

Now, because of this experience, I feel better equipped to bring my knowledge of

research into my future career. As a coach, I will apply my knowledge of data collection on a

much smaller scale as I observe my athletes and determine which types of training produce the

best results. I will also do literature reviews to find credible information on mileage and strength

training which will improve my training techniques and benefit my athletes. This experience

made me understand the importance of research and I will admit that it was a fun process to be a

part of.