--- title: "Ready, Set, Walk—or Waddle?" date: 2022-03-29T05:30:00-04:00 author: University of Maryland canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/ready-set-walk-or-waddle" section: Articles --- # Ready, Set, Walk—or Waddle? *March 29, 2022* — by [Karen Shih ’09](/author/karen-shih) > Behind the Scenes of a Kinesiology Study on Gait Changes in Pregnancy *Walking Study Karen Shih 03242022 SC 5860 1920x1080 — Nearly 2,000 studies at the University of Maryland rely on human subject volunteers, including kinesiology doctoral student Elizabeth Bell's research on how pregnancy affects walking and potential risks for future knee osteoarthritis. Maryland Today writer Karen Shih take laps in the gross motor laboratory in the School of Public Health building, wearing heart and oxygen monitors and sensors to track muscle and joint movements.* Covered head to toe in sticky sensors, with wall-mounted cameras trained on me from every corner of the room, I was tempted for a moment to whisper a creepy, “My preciousss.” But nobody would confuse me with Andy Serkis playing Gollum on the set of “The Lord of the Rings.” My bright-red 1980s-style headband and gym-based surroundings in the School of Public Health Building basement brought me back to reality: I was there for science, not cinema, as a participant in a University of Maryland research study—one of 2,000 involving human subjects currently taking place on campus. We’ve all seen the posters across campus, tacked up in a bathroom stall or on a bulletin board, recruiting volunteers to do something as simple as take an online survey or join a focus group—or as involved as get your brain scanned in an fMRI machine. Despite being a UMD student, then employee for a decade, I’d never taken the plunge. But as fate would have it, I came across a flier looking for a woman in her third trimester to take part in a walking study, just as I entered my 29th week of pregnancy and had started to develop a noticeable waddle. *sensors for pregnancy walking study* *Karen Shih adjusts sensors on body for pregnancy walking study* **Sidebar note:** **IRB by the Numbers** 1,921 active studies as of March 15; the most common are survey or focus groups Top five schools for human subject research: 1. College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (especially the Department of Psychology) 2. College of Education 3. School of Public Health 4. College of Arts and Humanities (especially the Department of Communications) 5. Robert H. Smith School of Business **Topics:** [Research](https://today.umd.edu/tags/research) **Tags:** [Gender](https://today.umd.edu/topic/gender), [Kinesiology](https://today.umd.edu/topic/kinesiology), [Research](https://today.umd.edu/topic/research) **Units:** [School of Public Health](https://today.umd.edu/topic/school-public-health)