Carly was a Survey Center on American Life Intern for American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC during Winter 2025.
Briefly explain what you did and the result of your internship.
In my internship at AEI, I helped Dan Cox in his research for the book he is writing about the gender gap in politics and dating in the United States. I worked with qualitative and quantitative data. Much of this data included sorting through interview transcripts that Dr. Cox had conducted with youth around the country. In these interviews we learned a lot about how young men and women think differently about each other but still have similar goals. This misalignment is leading to the differences in political ideology among youth today. Overall, I had a great experience at AEI and learned so much about the research process which I hope use in my future career.
What did you learn on your internship that you were not expecting to learn?
I learned to work productively with my team members!
How have your future plans changed because of what you learned from your internship experience?
It just encouraged me to continue on the path that I'm on.
Please share how your experience led to personal inspiration or insightful revelation.
I was discouraged about the state of youth in America, but listening to these interviews made me a lot more optimistic about their interactions with each other.
Would you recommend this internship to other students?
Yes! Their internship program is set up in a way that allows interns to learn about many different fields. And free breakfast and lunch are so much fun!