From May through July of 2023, The Care Economies (Canada) team had the assistance of seven wonderful University of Toronto undergraduate students. Five of these students came to us through the Faculty of Arts and Science Research Opportunity Program. Nicole Ha, Ronica Li, Emily Mastracci, Hope Sucee and Ivy Zhu are all students in their second or third year of study. Joining them were Charlotte Tomb and Jiangyuan Lin who are senior students — Charlotte is entering the MA program in Sociology and Jiangyuan is entering his fourth year at the University of Toronto. These senior undergraduates conducted their research with fellowship funding from the University of Toronto SSHRC Excellence Award.
The students assisted our project by listening to the audiorecordings of interviews with 100 Canadian caregivers, and correcting any errors in the automated transcript (each student doing up to 20 interviews). They then identified themes and produced research posters based on their findings. Under the general direction of Professor Ito Peng, we assigned a graduate student mentor to each student to help guide them through the analysis and poster design. This valuable work produced clean transcripts for further analysis, useful insights, and also a positive learning experience for seven undergraduates interested in the dynamics of care.
The students presented their research posters at the Faculty of Arts and Science Undergraduate Research Fair on September 21, 2023. Congratulations on a job well done!