Following the Thread: Research Made Simple
After finishing my degree in data science, I moved away from human subjects research and shifted my focus to healthcare data. While I still loved research, that particular part of my intellectual life was on hold. Until a Reiki workshop, of all things.
For the past two years, I’ve been learning Reiki in an online program and community, and that community is wonderfully curious. We’re interested in science, are skeptical of the woo, and we have questions. Some even expressed interest in doing research. I was so delighted at the idea of returning to research and resurrecting those skills! As we started to talk about what that might look like, I decided I wanted to create something on the basics. That became Research Made Simple.
You’re Smart Enough. You Belong Here.
I offered to put together a workshop for our Reiki community to help folks feel more comfortable engaging with scientific research. My goal wasn’t Stats 101, or, what is unfortunately common, a 2-hr workshop of an instructor’s knowledge of fancy sciency words. I wanted to give my Reiki friends practical tools to get started and form their own opinions about the research they read. My Reiki teacher’s podcast is Demystifying Magic, and I wanted to demystify some research!
The workshop covered the research life cycle, where to find scientific articles, how to evaluate research methods, and how to design mini experiments at home. We also scraped the surface of data literacy. Hitting the basics, like correlation doesn’t mean causation, how incomplete data can be misleading, and why visualizing data matters. Sometimes, two datasets can have similar summary statistics but tell very different stories when you actually look at them. Numbers are useful. Looking at your data is essential. (As a data scientist, I’m begging you to graph your data.)
My favorite tool that I developed for the workshop was a guided worksheet for reading scientific articles. The worksheet is designed to help evaluate a study’s methods as well as the results. The idea is to make research more approachable by breaking it into manageable pieces. Start with what you understand, follow your questions, and build from there.
I wanted to empower folks to think for themselves. Yes, there are gold standards of research methods and analyses. But even a study with all the right controls, blinding, and statistical significance may not have any scientific, clinical, or practical significance.
The Joy of Being Enough
What I didn't expect while creating this workshop was that it was an absolute joy. Well, not at first. I spent a lot of time stressing about what information to include and what to leave out. After I released the expectation that everyone could learn everything I learned over 11 years in a 90-minute workshop, that’s when joy seeped in. I still probably did too much, though.
This was the first presentation I prepared for without feeling the need to rehearse it over and over (and over and over). The content was already in my bones. I knew it. I had the experience, the education, and I had developed the tools. All I needed was a slide to remind me what I wanted to talk about. There was no frantic late-night Google spiral. Everything I needed was already at my fingertips. Everything I already knew was enough.
It left me with the time and space to be intentional about how I showed up and how much of myself I shared. I got to make my slides ✨pretty!✨Because if I'm going to talk about research, the slides are going to have cute icons and a relaxing color scheme. I got to bring my creative self through the slides, my intellectual self through the research, and my spiritual self through the way I approached the workshop and the people in the room. I got to do all of this within my Reiki community, a space where those parts of me are openly accepted. It felt like coming home to a part of myself. I hadn't realized how much I missed human subjects research, specifically helping other people make sense of it.
Follow the Thread
My intention for Research Made Simple was to create a space where people could engage with research in a way that empowered them to follow their curiosity. I wanted participants to leave knowing where to find articles and how to evaluate the quality of a study according to their own standards. Research doesn't replace intuition. It deepens it by building our confidence in what we know.
So here's your gentle nudge to follow a question that interests you. Read an article. Look at the graphs. Be curious about what you find and what you don't. You have permission to start where you are and learn as you go.
You’re enough, too.
AI Disclaimer: Artificial Intelligence was used to edit, organize, and provide feedback on this post.
The content, emotion, and the underlying belief that you are enough are my own.
Review my personal AI ethics here.
