Research Article

Writing the research article was made a lot easier because of the outline we had to do in addition to the numerous ePortfolio projects before this one. As a result, it felt like I was finally putting all of my work together in this research article, but was also adding the key information to piece it all together (the findings and discussion section, as well as the methods section). I really enjoyed learning how to summarize the data and coming up with conclusions from my findings. Phrasing was one of the main things I struggled with, and I think this project helped me to come up with what I say when I present my data by adding percentages and stating how many participants were included in a particular finding. I also was very satisfied with my findings because of how they aligned with my literature review findings, but also weren't what I expected necessarily. I thought that people were going to be anxious to talk to friends because they had been on technology for so long during the pandemic. However, not everyone met solely online with their friends during the pandemic, meaning that technology likely did not affect them as much. One of the most challenging and fun parts for me was to draw conclusions from my data. Overall, this project was really exciting to do and showed me that research is grueling, but also rewarding once you finish the work.