Research Article
When composing my research article, I learned the importance of corroborating your research findings to existing research in the field. When conducting research, you are oftentimes either trying to add to existing knowledge or attempting to fill in gaps within that field. I believe that my study attempted to fill in some of the gaps, as there are very few studies that have researched the experiences of formerly incarcerated students at four-year universities (almost all of the existing research on formerly incarcerated college students that I could find focused on students at community colleges). In the end, my findings both differed and correspond to some of the findings I discussed in my literature review.
One thing that was challenging about writing my research article was analyzing the results from my survey. My study only had four total participants, and I therefore had to analyze most of my findings in the form of a case study. This was challenging for me as I had never done a case study before, and was slightly unsure of what to make of the findings, as the two individuals I used for the case-study had drastically different responses. However, I believed that this highlighted the fact that the experiences of formerly incarcerated individuals varies from person to person. In contrast to these vary differing responses, none of the participants in the study agreed that UC Davis provides sufficient resources and support systems to formerly incarcerated students, which I believed to be a pretty significant finding, despite my small sample size.