Research opportunities
Psychology research assistant positions for undergraduates
Most undergraduate psychology research starts as a research assistant (RA) position in a professor's lab. RAs run study sessions, recruit participants, code behavioural data and search the literature, usually as volunteers or for course credit at first. Some labs post RA applications on their websites, so check there before you email.
- Typical first role
- RA running participants and entering data
- Training before you start
- Human research ethics, such as TCPS 2 CORE or CITI
- Skills to mention
- Research methods, statistics, R or SPSS
- Where it leads
- Directed study or an honours thesis
What a psychology research assistant does
RA work is careful, repeatable routine. A study only works if every participant gets the same instructions, so labs value RAs who follow a script exactly. Typical tasks:
- Running participants through consent, the task or survey, and debriefing
- Recruiting through the department's participant pool and scheduling sessions
- Coding behavioural data from video or transcripts against a coding manual
- Entering and cleaning data in Excel, SPSS or R
- Literature searches in PsycINFO or Google Scholar
Clinical, cognitive, social and developmental labs
The subfield changes who you work with:
- Clinical: patient or community samples and strict confidentiality. RAs handle screening calls, questionnaire scoring and data entry, while trained clinicians do assessments and therapy.
- Cognitive: computer-based experiments on attention, memory or perception, often built in PsychoPy or jsPsych, so some programming helps.
- Social and personality: surveys, often in Qualtrics, and lab studies where you may deliver a scripted role.
- Developmental: infants, children and families, with scheduling around parents and sometimes a background check.
Ethics training and what professors look for
Studies with human participants run under approval from the university's research ethics board, called an IRB in the US, and labs usually ask you to complete ethics training before you meet participants or see data. Canadian universities commonly accept the TCPS 2 CORE certificate, from a free online tutorial anyone can take, while many US schools use CITI Program modules. Having a certificate in hand when you email saves the lab a step.
Professors also look for good grades in research methods and statistics, and for reliability. A missed shift can leave a participant at a locked lab door, so name the weekly times you can hold.
From RA to directed study or honours thesis
Many departments offer a directed study course and a final-year honours thesis, each supervised by a faculty member. Professors tend to pick thesis students from their own RAs, so an RA role in second or third year is the usual route in.
Example email to a professor
The names and papers are made up. Swap in your own details and a real paper from the professor's page.
Subject: Second-year psychology student: RA interest in your mind-wandering studies
Dear Professor Whitfield,
Your 2025 paper on mind-wandering during recorded lectures found that probe-caught mind-wandering predicted recall a week later, but self-reports did not. I'm in second-year psychology at [your university], and I'd like to see how studies like that are run.
In my research methods course, my group ran a small Stroop experiment with classmates. I wrote the consent and instruction scripts, ran the sessions and analyzed the results in SPSS. I also hold a TCPS 2 CORE certificate.
I can hold Monday and Wednesday afternoons for sessions all next term, and I'm comfortable with scripted, repetitive work. I didn't see an RA application on your lab page, so I'm writing directly. Are you taking new research assistants?
Best regards, Nadia Marchetti BA Psychology, Year 2
Common questions
How do I become a psychology research assistant as an undergrad?
Check lab websites for open RA calls, then email professors whose studies interest you. Mention your methods and statistics courses, any ethics training, and the hours you can hold each week.
Are psychology research assistant positions paid?
Sometimes. Undergraduate RAs often start as volunteers or for credit, with paid roles funded by grants, work-study or summer awards. Full-time paid RA jobs also exist for recent graduates preparing for grad school.
What is TCPS 2 CORE?
It is a free, self-paced online ethics tutorial based on Canada's Tri-Council Policy Statement on research involving humans. Canadian universities commonly require it before you work with participants or their data.
Do I need to know R or SPSS to be an RA?
No, but it helps. Labs will teach you their own steps, so name what you have already done, such as cleaning a dataset or running a regression.