• Time commitment. About 10 hours per week; schedules are flexible and accommodating of your other commitments (e.g., courses, work, family obligations). Times are often during normal business hours, but morning and evening times are available if useful.

• Training. Training will be provided by Dr. Vail and SPEAR Lab supervisors and will involve learning the conceptual roots of the study (theory and methodology), practicing the procedures, and doing supervised trial runs.

• Responsibilities. Once trained, you will be placed in charge of research projects and data collection efforts. Thus, you will be given real responsibility for knowing the theory and methodology being used, recruiting participants and collecting data, and preparing that data for analysis.

• Reliability. You are expected to be attentive, reliable, and engaged. Be responsive via emails (or other contact method) and keep appointments with your SPEAR Lab colleagues and research participants.

• Professional conduct. Professional conduct is required when interacting with SPEAR Lab colleagues or research participants.

• Attire. Casual attire may be worn to lab meetings and training sessions, but attire must be neutral casual (no words, logos, or other symbols) or business casual for all interactions with participants.

As a research assistant, you will work on one or more research projects during the course of a semester. To prepare for any given project, you will undergo conceptual training, procedural training, and supervised practical training before going “live” on a project.

Step 1. Conceptual training: Theory and methodology. The first step is to learn the research question being investigated, the theoretical ideas involved, and how those ideas are being tested (the methodology). You are encouraged to play an active role here by asking questions and getting a clear understanding of theory, hypotheses, and methodological technique.

Step 2. Procedural training. Most studies will require that you become proficient at three roles: actor, support/monitor, and teacher.

• Actor: Because good experimental method requires consistent environments, you will need to learn a procedural script detailing what you should do and say to participants when you first meet them to begin the study. As consistency is important before and during data collection, it is important that this script be memorized verbatim though delivered in a casual manner.

• Support and monitor: Once participants have begun the study, you should remain attentive and available to help provide support if they have questions about the materials or procedures. Monitor the setting and take notes about any irregularities (distractions or interruptions e.g., using phones, having conversations, eating, illness, etc), but do so unobtrusively—that is, do not invade participants’ space or give the impression that you’re closely watching them as they complete the study; we want participants to feel free and open in their responses.

• Debriefing: After data has been collected, you’ll need to give participants some debriefing information. Debriefing not only serves an educational function, to inform participants about psychological research, but is also part of the ethical treatment of participants. As was the case with the introductory script, you will need to learn a short script to explain the research question and methodology.

In general, you must learn/memorize the relevant procedures, for any given study, before progressing to the next step.

Step 3. Supervised practice. Next, you will work with one or more of the SPEAR Lab supervisors, doing a full rehearsal in the anticipated research setting and getting familiar with the relevant equipment (e.g., paper/pencil materials, computer stations, physiological measurement equipment). Your colleagues will provide guidance and feedback during these sessions, which will continue to be scheduled until you are able to conduct the research data collection session properly and in its entirety. Thus, the better prepared you are, the sooner you can advance to “live” data collection sessions.

Step 4. Live data collection. Once you complete/pass supervised practice, you will be placed in charge of the study and may begin to recruit participants, schedule sessions, and collect data on your own.

• Data preparation. An important step in the research process is the accurate and reliable preparation of data for statistical analysis. Training in data preparation will typically be specific to your particular study.

• Transcription. Some of our research entails open-ended verbal responses which need to be transcribed for computerized quantitative textual analysis. This may be done using a specific computer program or data file, and training on these tasks are usually specific to the project.

• Content coding. Archival research (secondary data collection) projects usually require a systematic approach to searching for and then coding content in a particular archival source. This procedure involves training and a “search and coding” manual to guide your identification of content and coding of content data. These sources might entail a photograph, video footage, an essay response, or other written articles, and content coding is often done in teams.

• Field research. We occasionally conduct studies outside of the laboratory. When we do, we may ask you to conduct field visits to recruit participants from the public, collect data from them, or conduct an interview. Special training will be given in these instances.