School of Psychology & Neuroscience

Greta Todorova

In October 2019, I took part in a SGSSS’s advertised 3-month long internship within the Scottish Government. I was offered an intern position with the Trade and Investment Analysis unit at the Office of the Chief Economic Advisor.

The placement allowed me to not only utilise skills I already possessed – data analysis and visualisation with R, literature reviews and report writing but also to polish and expand them, as well as learn new ones.

My main task was to develop a dataset about Scotland’s trade in value-added terms. As such data did not exist and different datasets needed to be pieced together or reanalysed, the task relied heavily on my involvement with economists and statisticians beyond my immediate team. This was one of the most enjoyable parts (along with the data analysis) of my internship as engaging with colleagues supported my work with a lot of specialist knowledge and provided me with insight into their careers.

The second part of my internship focused on increasing knowledge about trade in value-added terms and its importance. I worked on presentations that needed to target the audience’s level of engagement with the topic. Whereas the nitty-gritty parts of the analysis were of interest to the economist/statisticians, the interpretation of the analysis was more relevant to policy makers. Modifying the way I presented my results to provide the two different perspectives, allowed me to view my work in different lights.

Finally, my work with R led to the development of 2 workshops introducing R to the larger Glasgow team. Materials for these workshops are available here: https://github.com/gretat/teaching_R.

Undoubtedly, the topic of my internship was far away from my PhD project, which focuses on autism and predictive coding. Nevertheless, it was an experience, which involved a bi-directional exchange of skills and knowledge. I would recommend to every SGSSS PhD student to apply for an internship to explore the applicability of their skills.

 

 Martin Ingram

During my SGSSS internship, I was based at the Scottish Government, within the Strategic Insights Unit.

I worked on a project looking at attitudes towards reskilling and upskilling in adults within Scotland’s workforce. Reskilling and upskilling is becoming an area of increasing interest within many developed nations, with particular concern for low-skilled workers who may be pushed out of employment as businesses undergo organisational change in order to remain competitive.

This problem is expected to become worse over time, as new technologies accelerate this rate of change, with less demand expected for jobs involving repetitive, easily-programmable routines.

However, on the flip side, many developed nations are also seeing greater demand for workers in jobs which are directly involved in the development of technology, and in jobs which are fundamentally difficult to automate (i.e health care and social care), otherwise known as ‘high tech and high touch jobs’.
Combined with the existing shortages of workers with relevant skills, and increasing risk of unemployment for low-skilled workers, these nations anticipate a need for significant reskilling and upskilling of their existing workforces. 

However, just because there is a demand for workers with particular skills, and even though training and educational programs may be put in place to help workers get those skills, it does not necessarily mean people will actively engage with these initiatives.

As such, the project I worked on involved a review of existing literature examining the attitudes and motivations of adults within employment towards learning new skills. 

Whilst the project was cut short due to the pandemic, I got some good experiences from meeting people involved with education policy, and was still able to present some of my findings to shareholders within the Scottish Government.

 

For more information about SGSSS internships, click here.

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First published: 9 December 2020