Online Research During COVID

Martina Youssef, Verrazzano Class of 2022, completed major in Psychology and minor in Biology 

For my capstone project, I chose to write my research paper about how COVID-19 sheltering in place affected infant sleep. As part of the Psychology Child Development lab since the Fall of 2020, I thought I would be working with cute babies and learn about their communication and development. However, remote learning lasted longer than we all expected and I actually ended up never meeting those cute babies due to COVID restrictions. I was disappointed at first, but that did not stop me from benefitting from a great research experience.

It was challenging to work in a child development lab without being in contact with any children since parents were frightened to participate in any activities that might infect their child with the virus. That was completely understandable, so we made compromises in order to keep the projects and lab running. For example, instead of advertising my project’s survey in social events to parents, we made multiple virtual flyers and sent them out to local libraries, churches, friends of families, etc. We worked with a lower sample than usual, but it was enough to investigate all the options on how and why infant sleep changed during the pandemic.

I learned a lot through this journey, not just about child development, but also about teamwork, creativity, different approaches to analyzing data, and taking responsibility for assigned tasks. Furthermore, I learned how to receive and give better constructive criticism, especially with scientific papers. I was introduced to so many new approaches to testing an idea and analyzing the data for it. My project team went from creating a simple survey to coming to the conclusion that infants were also impacted by the pandemic just as much as adults. Different ways of analyzing that data helped us make a difference in the child development world by leading future research to further investigate the long-term developmental impact on those infants.