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Since the amount of readers is, I am pretty sure smaller than I could say cheers to in a glance, dear friends, I comment before I write the next post, that I am quite sure I won't rename this blog to something like "student J's diary". Nevertheless, I will write about a student J today. It is not very personal, since what I want to write about is a public topic. It is mainly related to the posts before and regards psychology, science, and academic development in that field today. Theses aspects are certainly endless and what I want to write about specifically concern my thoughts about looking for a PhD position.
Since I am a German student of psychology and planning to enter a (probably clinical) PhD program next year, I am thinking about that and so a write here. What I am wondering is, what parameters for choice count when looking for a PhD position. Surely, the quality of the advisor, the dynamics and expertise in the lab, the department laboratories and the university itself do and especially important might be to have possibilities to work for instance with persons of other fields/sciences.
Beside all that, I would say, one other "parameter" is, what one assumes, how the field one is interested in, develops. This can only be answered within each field. Nevertheless there are factors - though they are related to the field of interest - that are genuinely rather aspects of society. I think trying to figure out those factors of society that are related to "the future of the field of one's interest" is also critical, when looking for possible PhD positions.
But somehow like "by definition" some of those society related factors are blurry. Especially, when they are due to questions of the development of some technology within the near future. In my case e.g. looking at the present and the past of the use of (multi)-media might be a blurry factor for decision making. But I think when I ask myself, what the "future" of media-technology could be like in 20 years, I quite confidently assume a development that I would express in analogy to the recent past of media. A precondition for that kind of outlook though is, that we hopefully will have a peaceful, positive development as society, what clearly is not for sure.
So then, what role might media play in basic research or in clinical research? I think an answer is mainly approached by looking at the development of computational power. 1st, for example it surely was not very thinkable to imagine graphical computer games, when the first digital computational machines were developed. Still only a short time later the gaming industry is now as big as the film-making industry. I would say this is "just" due to something that is reflected in the fact, that nearly each person in the "western world" has a computer and uses it as much as the television is in use, even more in the younger generations. Only a 2nd argument I consider at the moment as another technological aspect in regard to the questions about media in future research (dame, maybe it is better to consider more...). It is the development of statistics (like network modeling or structural equation modeling or ............) and its application.
I would say, that "the next levels" underlying/interacting with those technological aspects are, economical, demographical, political, climatical, ... work, wealth, adam and eve's apples and peace and love ;)
Anyway fortunately here we are far off topic.
