Six Weeks In: The Internship Experience Study
Six weeks in a Pakistani organisation is the input. The study asks what those six weeks actually build, in a workplace where software, automation and artificial intelligence already do part of the work, and whether the internship links the university and the organisation or is only six weeks of attendance.
What the study asks
- What work do business interns actually perform, and how much of it is mediated by digital systems, automation or AI?
- What does the internship contribute to technical, digital and soft skills?
- How ready do students feel for a workplace in which machines perform part of the work, and what predicts that readiness?
- Does the mode of the internship, physical, hybrid or fully remote, change what is gained?
- Does the internship strengthen the link between the university and the host organisation, and what would strengthen it further?
- How do students find their placements, and what part do references and personal contacts play?
- How do students account for their own motive, effort and ethics, and how do they apportion the outcome between themselves, the organisation, the university and circumstance?
How it measures
Three kinds of question: tick lists and single choices on what students did, how they found the placement, which tools they used and where they fell short; eleven short scales on the constructs below, plus one grid on who is responsible for the outcome; and three open questions on challenges, the students' own solutions, and recommendations to the university.
- Human-machine work exposure, and human-machine workforce readiness
- Goal and task clarity, workplace support and mentoring, university support, internship satisfaction
- Industry-academia linkage
- The search for the placement and perceived access
- Effort and seriousness, attribution of the outcome, and work ethics in letter and spirit
Analysis: frequencies and group comparisons by mode, sector and route into the placement; reliability and factor analysis of the scales; a structural model of what predicts readiness and linkage; and thematic analysis of the open answers, quoted anonymously.
Why anonymous
Honest answers about a host organisation, and about the university itself, come only when nothing can be traced back. The questionnaire carries no name and no roll number, critical answers are never shared with the host organisation, and nothing in it touches a grade. Anonymity here is a measurement decision, not only an ethical one.
What it is for
The findings go to two places: the Department's internship programme, as evidence of what to change in how students are prepared and placed, and the case-study series, which the same interns write. Findings will be published in plain language in the Research Bulletin on this site.
Conducted under the Department's research ethics process with the interns of the Department of Management Sciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus. The questionnaire is issued to interns directly; it is not an open survey.