CLOSER interns Işıl Bastug and Katie Sykes reflect on their research and policy internship, including their work on the cognition cross-study data guide and response to the DWP ARIs.
Our experience at CLOSER was a kind of three-month-long flow state. It was often challenging, but never overwhelming. It was truly rewarding…and the time flew!
Responding to the Department for Work and Pensions’ Areas of Research Interest
Our internship at CLOSER had two parts. For the first half of our internship, we worked with Jay Dominy, CLOSER’s Public Affairs Manager, to craft a response to the Department for Work and Pensions’ Areas of Research Interest (ARIs). After familiarising ourselves with how research is used across various British political structures, we identified two research questions that we believed CLOSER’s partner studies could provide rich evidence on. These questions were related to economic inactivity among older adults and changes in disability over time. Then, we delved into a detailed literature search. While learning a lot about longitudinal population studies and other sources of data in the UK, we found really interesting and mind-blowing answers to our respective questions. Finally, we worked together to finalise our submission. And now it is on its way to the Department for Work and Pensions!
Updating CLOSER’s data harmonisation resources
For the other half of our internship, we worked with Dr Charlotte Campbell to bring some of CLOSER’s data harmonisation materials up to date. These included a cross-study guide that neatly summarised the data collected by CLOSER’s partner studies on cognition, and three harmonisation scripts that took data on height and weight from different sweeps of a study, standardised it, and used this standardised data to calculate cohort members’ BMI for each sweep. As complete Stata novices, we found the learning curve involved in grappling with these scripts to be pretty steep – but the satisfaction of finding, and sometimes actually fixing, bugs in thousands of lines of code made it all worth it!
Işıl’s thoughts
“During my undergraduate years, I was already fascinated by longitudinal population studies as I was taught statistics with Millennium Cohort Study. However, my internship at CLOSER opened a whole new world to me. I truly enjoyed reading more about the depth and breadth of CLOSER’s 19 partner studies. I was even a bit envious and wondered why similar studies were not conducted in my country! I also loved how much I learned about anything during my internship, whether it was reading a code in STATA, engaging with the UK Parliament or doing a review of systematic reviews. As a student who always wants to add new tools to her toolbox, I couldn’t be more grateful for my time at CLOSER.”
Katie’s thoughts
“‘Good’ work, the kind that keeps people healthy and happy, is a hot topic right now, and it’s something I’ve learned a lot about at CLOSER. For one thing, it’s at the heart of the question I’ve been synthesising research on for the Department for Work and Pensions: how do we design jobs and workplaces that people will be able to – and want to – stay in as they enter their 60s and 70s? But I’ve also experienced it in practice. After six years of being a self-employed ‘team of one’, it’s been so refreshing to be part of an enthusiastic, kind, committed group doing meaningful work.”
On that note…
Huge thanks to our super-supportive line manager, Jay, who’s set the bar high for any future managers we might have! Many thanks also to Charlotte, our guide to the brave new worlds of Stata code and data harmonisation, and to the whole team for their warm welcome, which made us feel comfortable at CLOSER from day one.
Işıl Bastug and Katie Sykes completed their research and policy internships with CLOSER in summer 2024. During this time, they both graduated from University College London – Işıl with a BSc in BSc in Psychology and Education and Katie with a Postgraduate Diploma in Social Science Research Methods.
Suggested citation:
Bastug, I & Sykes, K. (2024). ‘Working at the intersection of academia and policy: reflections on our CLOSER internship’. CLOSER. 12 September 2024. Available at: https://closer.ac.uk/blog/academia-policy-bastug-sykes