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Fast Stream Competency Questions 2018/19

Hi Guys

I am currently applying for Operational Research Fast Stream and have to answer some competency-based questions.

I was hoping you could give me some feedback on my answers and maybe give some examples of your answers for comparison-sake.

Here are the questions.
Problem Structuring: Give evidence from work or study of where to applied problem structuring approach.
Quantitive Analysis: Give evidence of where you have used quantitative methods to tackle and solve a problem.
Delivering Results: Describe a challenging project or activity which you have planned and taken through to conclusion.
Engaging People: describe a situation where the relationship you have built either within a team or with customers have helped you achieve a shared goal,

Here are my answers so far:

Problem Structuring:
While studying for my MSc degree in neuroimaging, I was tasked with writing a 5,000-word literature review on a topic prominent in contemporary neuroscience. As I was extremely interested in non- pharmacological, treatments for psychological disorders, I decided to conduct my research on uses of transcranial stimulation techniques in treatment of schizophrenia. This was a widely researched topic with hundreds of papers published addressing it, far too many to cover within the tight word limit, or even to be able to read in time, as the project was meant to be submitted in the middle of end-of-semester exams. I realised that if I was to succeed in both writing the literature review and revising for my exams, I had to limit the scope of my review. As one of the criteria for the project was to address a contemporary topic, I have limited my search to only clinical studies that have been conducted in the last 5 years. This process has reduced the number of results from 449, to 65 making the task already more manageable, however I decided to further focus the scope of my review by introducing some exclusion and inclusion criteria. My criteria included only those studies that either aimed at finding effects of transcranial stimulation on symptoms of schizophrenia or compared the efficacy of two or more transcranial stimulation techniques in symptom treatment. Meanwhile, any studies that did not include any meaningful data analysis or that did not have a clear description of methodology were excluded. Introducing these criteria left me with 42 papers that could be used for the review.
To demonstrate the above literature selection method in my review, I have induced a flowchart, detailing each stage of my research. I have also created and stuck to a strict timetable in order to manage my time between working on the project and revising for the exam.
At the end, I was able to submit my review a week before the deadline and obtain a mark of 68% for it, meanwhile performing similarly well in my exams.

Quantitive Analysis: A detailed description of my Dissertation Project where I have used ANOVA and MANOVA tests to compare parametric data, Mann-Whitney U- test and Wilcoxon test were used on non-parametric data and where I have also fitted a fast-defussion model to my data.

Delivering Results: Still thinking on this one...

Engaging People: Going to talk about the the time I worked at the family business and managed to find sponsors for our company and have done all the paperwork for us to join this prestigious trade association (although maybe this will be used for delivering results).

Anyway, tell me what you think and what you would say, sorry fro the long post :smile:

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