SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES - DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
VOLUNTARY RESEARCH ASSISTANT SCHEME
The Voluntary Research Assistant Scheme (VRAs) is an experience offered to UG students (year 2 to 4) enrolled in a Psychology programme at Heriot Watt University.
Aims
- Increase your employability profile by including the scheme in your CV
- Develop further your transferable skills in terms of data handling and reports preparation
- Get greater knowledge of a research environment, including team work, and of the research environment in general
- Get hands-on research experience on a specific topic of Psychology of your interest
How?
By taking part in a research project led by a staff member.
Minimum duration: 2 months; Maximum duration: 12 months
Minimum hours/week: 2 hours; Maximum hours/week: 8 hours
The number of hours undertaken will depend on the time of year and your commitments in relation to your studies and should be discussed and agreed with your supervisor.
Is there a selection process?
The VRA experience is agreed with the supervisor. If the supervisor accepts the application and there are places available, then no further selection is needed. If there are more applications than places available, then there is a selection process.
The selection is based on:
- CV (qualifications acquired up until the application and extracurricular relevant activities)
- Personal statement highlighting the reason for pursuing this opportunity ( e.g. experience useful for pursuing Masters programme or PhD position; experience useful for developing particular skills; experience useful for deciding between clinical and research career)
- Match between abilities-project (e.g. if project requires use of SPSS independently, unlikely to benefit year 2 student).
If you are interested in becoming a VRA for any of the projects below, please email the relevant staff contact copying in VRA Coordinator: Dr Mel McKendrick M.McKendrick@hw.ac.uk
| Project | Title |
| 1 | Objective, automatic measures of depression – can data from a mobile phone be related to depression? |
| Description | Participants will be asked to complete some baseline measures assessing cognition, personality and mood. All participants will need to download an app for their phone. |
| VRA Role |
|
| Start Date | The beginning of the semester will be the busiest as this is when the recruitment and setting of the study takes place. |
| Duration | The post is for approximately 4 weeks. |
| Benefits to VRA | The VRA will gain experience in measures of depression, emotion, personality and cognition. |
| Staff Contact | Dr Mary E. Stewart |
| M.E.Stewart@hw.ac.uk |
| Project | Title |
| 2 | Attendance tracking |
| Description | Collecting attendance tracking data to promote the student experience shortly. |
| VRA Role | Data analysis: Collection and analysis of ad-hoc staff attendance records. These will be compared with newly collected data. |
| Start Date | Beginning of semester |
| Duration | 6 months (initially) |
| Benefits to VRA | Development of practical data collection and analysis skills. |
| Staff Contact | Dr Terry Lansdown |
| T.Lansdown@hw.ac.uk |
| Project | Title |
| 3 | Driver Distraction |
| Description | An existing dataset concerning self-report driver distraction behaviours requires analysis. |
| VRA Role | Investigation and data analysis. |
| Start Date | Beginning of the semester |
| Duration | 6 months |
| Benefits to VRA | Development of practical data collection and analysis skills. |
| Staff Contact | Dr Terry Lansdown |
| T.Lansdown@hw.ac.uk |
| Project | Title |
| 4 | Real world Observation of Driver Distraction |
| Description | A paper by Sullman provided a datum of real world observational data on driver distraction. This project will collect and analyse data on current behaviours in and around the Edinburgh region. |
| VRA Role | Data collection and analysis |
| Start Date | Beginning of the semester |
| Duration | 6 months |
| Benefits to VRA | Practical experience of data collection and analysis |
| Staff Contact | Dr Terry Lansdown |
| T.Lansdown@hw.ac.uk |
| Project | Title |
| 5 | An investigation of differences in social perception across levels of social anxiety and autistics traits. |
| Description | A pilot project has been conducted on differences in face processing and social anxiety. The study will be refined and expanded to an online sample. |
| VRA role | Help with recruitment, data collection and analysis of the survey presented on Qualtrics. |
| Start Date | Semester 1 |
| Duration | To be agreed depending on availability |
| Benefits to VRA |
|
| Staff Contact | Dr Mel McKendrick |
| M.McKendrick@hw.ac.uk |
| Project | Title |
| 6 | Enhancing memory binding abilities across age using tDCS Project funded by the Alzheimer Scotland Dementia Research Centre |
| Description | Recent studies suggest that transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) can enhance Visual Short term Memory (VSTM) capacity. Binding is a cognitive construct that operates in VSTM but can be dissociated from other VSTM functions. Binding is vulnerable to abnormal variants of ageing such as Alzheimer’s disease and declines dramatically in older adults with cognitive impairment (e.g., MCI). Proving that binding functions can be enhanced using brain electrical stimulation would help design non-pharmacological interventions aimed at enhancing memory abilities relevant to everyday life functioning. To this aim, we will apply tDCS to a brain network pivotal for VSTM binding (Exp 1). Secondly, we will investigate the electrophysiological changes related to the stimulation (Exp 2) and, finally, we will explore the impact of ageing on memory benefits drawn from Tdcs (Exp 3). |
| VRA Role | The VRA post within this project is to participate as research assistant in Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 of the above project. Exp 2: We will investigate the neural correlates of enhancements in VSTM abilities resulting from tDCS. Sample: healthy participants free of sensory, neurological or psychiatric disorders (explored through a preliminary questionnaire). Tasks: recruitment, testing, data processing. Exp 3: We will investigate if older adults can also benefit from tDCS regarding their overall VSTM abilities and more specifically their binding abilities. Sample: older healthy participants free of sensory, neurological or psychiatric disorders (explored through a preliminary questionnaire). Tasks: recruitment, testing, data processing |
| Start Date | September 2018 |
| Duration | 9 months |
| Benefits to VRA | Techniques learned:
|
| Staff Contact | Dr Anna Sedda |
| a.sedda@hw.ac.uk |
