Through my PURM experience within the Positive Psychology Lab, I participated in three main projects: (1) COVID-19 lexical data; (2) agency visible in women's literature; (3) African American progress through data collection and synthesis. 

COVID-19: In my preliminary data collection, I compared dictionaries of agency, efficacy, imagination, and optimism. There seemed to be a significant increase in agentic, efficacity, and optimistic dictionary usage. The exception was imaginative word usage which had around half of the increase that other dictionaries saw. 

Women’s Literature: We are beginning this exploratory research topic by analyzing the first 20 pages (the exposition) for the top 10 novels by women and men from the years 1950-2022. I am still compiling the list, but in total, I have scanned ~700 documents, which gave us roughly 3.9 million words to analyze. I hope to uncover more data which provides more insight into women’s agency; more specifically, how historical events from the time period potentially shaped the writing landscape.  

African American Progress: We are still in the preliminary stages of this research topic. However, I began collecting data for our inquiries by analyzing census data collected from the year 1900-present. I was particularly looking at data from significant progress markers of agency including education, income, population, healthcare, and voting rights.  

I also helped my project leader, Noah, by providing summaries of articles and performing data analyses on graphical data as needed. Overall, my experience in the lab this summer has helped me improve my data analysis and collection skills while simultaneously bettering my critical reading skills for ciphering through large quantities of journals and research papers.