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Undergraduate Research at UMass Dartmouth
Alongside Professors Jenkins and Roscoe, I was
involved in multiple aspects of conducting research,
including data collection, inputting data into SPSS,
conducting a literature review, formulating hypotheses,
looking for patterns in the data, and finally
obtaining results and reaching conclusions. The
work was originally prepared for and presented at
the 2016 New England Political Science Association
Conference and was just recently published in the
New England Political Science Association Journal.
process. This experience has been extremely valuable
to me, thanks to the OUR. Partaking in research
provides undergraduate students with so many ways
to explore their interests and bring their educational
experience to a higher level.
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Participating in this OUR funded project was a
worthwhile endeavor. I have been able to use what I
learned from this research both professionally and
personally. Living in a small town with a similar form
of government as in the one we studied, I can apply
findings from our research to my own community.
Being interested in politics, I have and will continue
to be involved in local politics in my hometown. I can
use what I learned to help impact my community in a
meaningful way. Understanding who votes and how
they decide whom to vote for in these local, low-information
elections is a significant advantage.
Finally, by participating in this project I was able
to work with two seasoned and distinguished
researchers, thus learning the process of developing
and implementing research much more thoroughly.
Learning about the process in class is one thing, but
it is a whole new experience to actually carry out the
The poster of the 2016 New England Political Science Association
Conference, where Borges presented the final results of his
research in conjunction with his supervisors