need help with posters

[catsarepawsome]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I'm at an institution that *strongly encourages* residents to publish or present something prior to graduation. Trouble is, I've never written a poster or published anything before. I have several ideas I'd like to learn more about and hopefully, write about in the process, but it seems like every time I do a lit search to see what's out there, it's already been done. I feel like an unoriginal idiot. 🙁

Anyway, having never been to a conference before I also have no idea what kinds of topics would be interesting to other conference goers. I was wondering if any of you have access to lists of previously presented research poster titles/abstracts at the APA conference (or any other similar conferences) so I can do a reality check to see just how ridiculously naive I am.

Totally lost, and would appreciate any help you might have to point me in the right direction. Thanks guys.

 

[Frazier]

I'm at an institution that *strongly encourages* residents to publish or present something prior to graduation. Trouble is, I've never written a poster or published anything before. I have several ideas I'd like to learn more about and hopefully, write about in the process, but it seems like every time I do a lit search to see what's out there, it's already been done. I feel like an unoriginal idiot. 🙁

Anyway, having never been to a conference before I also have no idea what kinds of topics would be interesting to other conference goers. I was wondering if any of you have access to lists of previously presented research poster titles/abstracts at the APA conference (or any other similar conferences) so I can do a reality check to see just how ridiculously naive I am.

Totally lost, and would appreciate any help you might have to point me in the right direction. Thanks guys.

Go to society/organization homepages and look for meetings/conferences.

For example, http://www.sobp.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=1

Notice there is a meeting tab on the top horizontal menu that offers information about both the upcoming and prior 2 year's meetings. If you were to choose, say, 2011 Annual Meeting's Program book, you would find a list of the presentations/posters/etc that were offered during that respective conference. If you go to the online planner, you can actually browse the conference abstracts by day. If you download the ebook, all the abstracts are included.

Obviously your fit will depend on the scope of the given meeting... But, if you are looking for more example projects, this sort of setup is very common on established websites.

Here is another: http://www.adaa.org/resources-professionals/conference/call-papers
Notice, that while no archives appear to be on the site, if you google search for last year's event ("32nd ADAA Annual Conference"), the first result is a pdf of the full conference book that lists all the presentations of the event (http://www.adaa.org/sites/default/files/2012-Final-Conference-Program.pdf).

Rinse and repeat for the conferences that interest you; however, remember that [typically] the order should go: 1. Develop idea for an interesting study, 2. Complete study, 3. Locate conference ... (i.e. not step 3 first).

 

[catsarepawsome]

Blais, thank you very much for a prompt and helpful response. You are AWESOME.

 

[nancysinatra]

What year are you? It might help to go to a conference first, and see what people are doing.

Another possibility is a case report + lit review. Lit reviews alone can be tough if you're trying to be really thorough, but if you center it around a case report then you don't have to re-invent the wheel.

In my area of the country, there has been a lot of usage of new synthetic drugs of abuse. So that's something that people have been doing case reports on lately. Maybe you could think of a case that you've seen that relates to something that's changing or on the rise in your own area.

Alternatively, find an attending who's doing something that interests you, and see if you can work with them. Then you can make a poster based on your involvement in that work. Or you can take their data and offer to write up a paper, which is often appreciated.

 

[SmallBird]

There is a very nice research toolkit available that has some cool pointers about thinking about a research question, preparing a poster, etc. It is available for free here:

http://surmepi.sun.ac.za/en-za/resources.aspx

Although you do need to register.

If you don't feel like registering PM me and I can email it to you. There are components for qualitative and quantitative research.