How Being a Researcher Impacted My Life

Abstract

Doing research can help people to learn about a lot of different topics. For example, researchers can learn how to work in a group, collect and analyze data, how to make accessible materials, and get to know their own strengths. In this paper, a researcher shares what she learned while working on two research projects about young adults with intellectual/developmental disabilities and co-occurring mental health conditions. The first project was peer mentoring. In this project, we focused on individual needs for someone who may be struggling with mental health. The second project was about workplace disclosure. In this project, we tried to find out if young adults disclose their mental health conditions at work and in job interviews. We explain how we did the projects, how the researcher learned to do research, and what made it easy to learn. We also share about the impact of doing research on the researcher’s personal life. Finally, we share why doing inclusive research is important and how to help researchers with disabilities feel like they are valued members of the research team.