My ADR England internship experience: How internships can kickstart a professional journey exploring public good research

In line with ADR England’s mission to ensure more decisions are informed by economic and social research insights, we recently offered a competitive summer internship to candidates from the Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) Black Internship Programme. The successful intern, Sara Udoka Duru, has been working on a variety of projects over her eight-week internship. In this blog, she shares her experiences.

Background

I’m a psychology graduate student, interested in a future career focused on integrating global development, psychology, and political studies to help people impacted by environmental and socio-political challenges. Understanding data is essential to interpreting research and enabling better informed policy decisions that improve people's lives.

My internship with ADR England has offered me opportunities to learn about administrative data and its potential, and to connect and network with experts across multiple fields (e.g., communications and engagement, social research, global development, public health, and the charity sector). I’ve also had the opportunity to work on health-related projects, contributing to my personal and professional development.

What I did

During my eight weeks with ADR England, I was involved in three main projects.

Young person’s version of a research paper: This project involved representing a complex scientific research paper in a more accessible way for younger audiences to understand. I started by reading and summarising three academic research papers using one of ADR England’s flagship datasets, called Education and Child Health Insights from Linked Data (ECHILD). I presented these summaries to the ADR England Public Insights Panel who helped inform the selection of one of these papers as my focus.

I then began brainstorming ways to present the paper using infographics to visually enhance the information for a younger audience, making it more digestible. I published the final version on the ADR UK website.

By making research more accessible to younger people, we can contribute to their understanding of why research is important. This can help them make informed decisions by engaging in important civic conversations that may impact their lives.

Data mapping: My second task involved exploring datasets in the HDR UK Innovation Gateway and considering potential new linkages to ADR UK flagship datasets. This exploratory mapping exercise may be helpful to health researchers looking at the social determinants of health by illustrating thematic crossovers with social economic research, as well as available administrative datasets for research.

Poster for the HDR UK Black Internship Programme closing ceremony: My third major task was to create a visual summary of my overall internship experience as an engaging and accessible poster, to present to health data experts at the HDR UK Black Internship Programme closing ceremony. This ceremony is intended to increase the exposure of work going on across host organisations and the wider ranging work taken on by interns during their internship, including ADR England and across the UK in academia, business, charity, civil service and the NHS.

What I’ve gained from this experience

I feel extremely thankful for getting this internship opportunity; it's still difficult for me to accept that it's over now. I wish to extend my time interning at this organisation and others within UK Research and Innovation to broaden my knowledge of administrative data. I’d also like to collaborate more with public sector experts, aiming to expand my understanding and eventually make a positive impact on local and global communities.

I have gained a lot of knowledge in a brief period, but the main areas where I feel I have improved are my interpersonal communication and project management skills.

Interpersonal communication: Before starting this internship, it used to take me more time to convey information in verbal and written form to different people due to my dyslexia and being a non-native English speaker. However, I now have a greater sense of confidence when sharing my views and ideas with others about the projects I’m involved in, despite there being always room for growth. A few of the tasks that have helped me achieve this level of comfort in communication were presenting to the ADR England Public Insights Panel, writing emails, and lots of meetings with colleagues and other interns.

Project management: I’ve always considered myself an organised person, but this internship showed me the importance of being even more organised! It also highlighted the importance of time management in helping teams work effectively together towards achieving common goals when dealing with multiple competing priorities. A few specific examples of activities that have helped enhance my skills are:

• clearly defining the objectives and deliverables of my internship
• prioritising my work based on level of complexity
• identifying potential risks that may slow down my productivity and tackling them in a timely way
• breaking down tasks, setting feasible deadlines, and using my electronic calendar effectively
• learning how to use Trello, a shared project management tool
• working collaboratively with the ADR UK Strategic Hub to gather feedback and meet timelines
• weekly meetings with my line manager and mentor.

Final reflections

On reflection, while I did sometimes feel anxious, exhausted, and stressed because I felt some of the internship activities pushed me out of my comfort zone, I persisted and was able to overcome the challenges of learning something new. I have no regrets about my experiences and am confident that I put in my best effort and was always receptive to learning and receiving constructive feedback from colleagues.

I strongly feel my time with ADR England has been a turning point for me and will lead me to securing new opportunities and for this reason, I will be forever grateful to the team for the overall guidance and support they have provided me.

Read Sara’s Young person’s version of a research paper. She is hoping to publish the mapping exercise soon.

ECHILD is now available for researchers to apply to access. Find out more.