Preparing for Questions at your First Conference Presentation
BLOG POST BY CHRISTINE TULK
Your first conference presentation as an undergraduate is often a 5-minute poster presentation at a conference organized by the university to showcase your thesis research. Once you’ve actually figured out the contents of your poster and practiced what you plan to say, the next most important part of your preparation is to anticipate questions that people might ask you about your research. People attending the conference have varied interests, and they may not be familiar with your research area, your methods, or your analyses. On the other hand, there are usually also other students and experienced researchers who know quite a bit about your subject area and are interested to find out about your approach and your results.
Although it can seem a bit daunting, there are some questions that are commonly asked during research presentations that you can think about ahead of time. Spending some time thinking about possible questions and how you would answer will help you be less nervous and can give you new ideas for your future research.
1. GENERAL QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR METHOD
Information about your method is often a big source of questions because all of your results and the conclusions you draw tie into how you’ve conducted your research. Sometimes, it’s been quite a while since you’ve thought about some of the details of your method because of the time that has passed between data collection and your conference presentation, so it’s a good idea to quickly refresh your memory before your presentation. Some of the basics include information on the sample (e.g., demographics, employment info), procedure (e.g., recruitment, experimental procedures, survey administration), and measures (e.g., scale names, response options and ranges). Some examples of general questions about your method might include:
- What was the breakdown of participants by gender and ethnicity?
- What kind of employment information did you collect?
- Could you tell me what the response options were for the scale measure you used?
- How did you manipulate the independent variable in your experiment? Did you use manipulation checks? If no, why not?
- Was there a particular order to how you presented items in your survey to participants? How might the order have influenced responses?
- How might social desirability bias have influenced your participants?
2. QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR ANALYSES
Most researchers who are well-informed about data analysis understand that students at the undergraduate level have not yet learned sophisticated statistical and qualitative techniques for data analysis. Having said that, it’s a good idea to think about why you chose the analysis that you did when you’re preparing for your presentation. For example:
- Why did you use a t-test?
- Why did you use ANOVA rather than regression?
- Why did you use regression rather than ANOVA?
- What control variables did you use?
It’s also a good idea to refresh your memory about your preliminary analyses. Again, most researchers are not going to expect a student at the undergraduate level to use advanced techniques for handling missing data, outliers, severely skewed data, etc. But, they might ask you some basic questions like the following:
- Did you check for missing data? Did some variables have more missing data than others? If so, why do you think that might be?
- Did you check for outliers? If you found outliers, how might that have affected your findings?
3. LIMITATIONS
Most research designs have some fairly standard limitations so it’s a good idea to brush up on the limitations of the research design you used for your study and what kind of research design could be used to overcome those limitations. For example, a correlational survey conducted at one timepoint cannot be used to draw conclusions about cause-and-effect. Can you think of a research design that could provide stronger evidence?
There’s also typically a limitations section in your poster or a part of your discussion where you talk about any unexpected findings, and questions about how the method might have contributed to unexpected findings are particularly common simply because you brought it up. Don’t think of this as criticism. Think of it as demonstrating that you’ve thought about your findings and also as helping fellow researchers in your audience who might be considering research on a similar topic or using a similar method. If you know something didn’t go as planned, think about how you might do things differently if you were repeating the same study. Here are some examples of questions:
- You speculated that the measure you used may have led to your unexpected results. Why do you think this is the case? Are there other measures you could have used?
- You mentioned social desirability bias could have been a problem with this particular research. Is there anything you could do next time to mitigate this? Is there any way you could have checked if this was a problem?
- Do you think that you would get different results if your sample/recruitment strategy/measure/other aspect of your procedure were different? What could future research do differently?
- Did you consider other control variables?
- Why do you think those variables were so highly correlated? Do you think that could have contributed to your findings?
Potential limitations of your study tend to generate questions that take a little more thought to answer, but thinking about how you would answer these questions can be very useful because they can help you better understand the conclusions you can draw from your findings and also lead to some new ideas for future studies.
4. APPLICATIONS OF YOUR RESEARCH
It’s also pretty common to be asked how you think your research might be used or what could be done as a result of your findings. This is particularly true in more applied areas of research like organizational psychology because most people have some experience working and so can relate to topics about work such as job stress, work-life balance, transitioning from university, and workplace mental health. Findings that demonstrate some form of social injustice (e.g., gender inequity, racism) also tend to generate questions about what might be done in universities, at work, or by society in general.
5. WHEN YOU’RE STRUGGLING TO ANSWER
Even after all your preparation, sometimes you get a question that throws you off. You may be really nervous, you may not understand the question, you may not have thought about this particular question, or you just may not know the answer. It’s all a part of presenting research to a live audience, and it happens to all researchers at one time or another!
If the question wasn’t clear to you or you don’t understand what you’re being asked, don’t be afraid to politely ask the person to clarify or to ask for more details. For example, you could respond with “I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking, would you mind asking your question again?” Sometimes just having the question restated another way can help you understand and give you just a bit more time to think of a response.
If you really have no idea about how to answer a question – maybe you’re really nervous or you just haven’t thought about what they’re asking – you can ask the person for their contact information and follow up later when you’ve had time to think more. For example, you could respond with “I don’t know the answer right now, and I’d like to think about your question more. Would you mind giving me your email address so I can follow up with you?”
Once you’ve prepared for your presentation, try to relax. Remember that people attending conferences who take the time to attend your poster session are genuinely interested in your findings and what you’ve learned from your research.
@2022 Christine Tulk