Term: Spring 2021
Status: Open
Working With: Kelsey Wright, kwright22@wisc.edu
Topic: “Safer-at-Home”: How Shifting Daily Realities Affect Life Course Decisions, Aspirations, and Practices
This project investigates how the daily lives of people have been affected due to “Safer-at-Home” orders, and whether those changes have affected (or not) respondents’ ideas and practices around romantic relationships and childbearing. I’ve interviewed individuals in Dane County from low-, middle-, and high-income backgrounds about their typical days, worries, and feelings, and how those have changed over the course of experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic; these interviews also include talking to respondents about how their romantic relationships (or potential for romantic relationships) have stayed the same or changed and whether they are interested in having children now or in the future.
Activities: Undergraduate students interested in working as a research assistant will qualitative code interviews conducted for this research project. These interviews cover the following topics: changing daily activities during COVID safer-at-home orders, including changes related to socialization, romantic relationships, work, education, and housing; alongside a deeper dive into whether and how people are thinking about romantic relationships, childbearing, and their worries and hopes about the future in general during COVID-19. Coding codes would be provided, along with training on how to use NVivo software and apply coding techniques.
To Apply: Please contact Kelsey Q. Wright at the email address above. No prerequisites. I will train students on any necessary software or transcription techniques. Students should have a good command of spoken and written English.