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Psychology research assistant skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025

5 min read

Quoted experts

Dr. Jelena Sanchez Ph.D.,

Dr. David LoConto Ph.D.

Below we've compiled a list of the most critical psychology research assistant skills. We ranked the top skills for psychology research assistants based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 11.1% of psychology research assistant resumes contained data collection as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a psychology research assistant needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 psychology research assistant skills for your resume and career

1. Data Collection

Data collection means to analyze and collect all the necessary information. It helps in carrying out research and in storing important and necessary information. The most important goal of data collection is to gather the information that is rich and accurate for statistical analysis.

Here's how psychology research assistants use data collection:

Contributed to research, including literature search using library databases, management of data collection, and recorded data and analysis.
Conducted family interviews and visits to facilitate the administration of questionnaires and data collection devices to ultimately perform research assessments.

2. SPSS

Here's how psychology research assistants use spss:

Conducted psychological research on the correlation between humility and romantic relationships before and after having children using survey methods and SPSS.
Conducted statistical analyses using SPSS and completed a written report interpreting results.

3. Research Projects

Here's how psychology research assistants use research projects:

Develop research projects on Emotional Intelligence and Interpersonal Sensitivity- Code data for nonverbal behavior- Lead psychology scholarly research article discussions
Researched and compiled articles for faculty -Created literature reviews to assist in ongoing research projects

4. Data Analysis

Here's how psychology research assistants use data analysis:

Performed empirical data analysis, screened and directed participants to appropriate experimenters.
Completed data analysis and presented results at conferences.

5. Psychology Lab

Here's how psychology research assistants use psychology lab:

Conducted psychological research in the Tufts University Psychology Lab on projects studying social interactions and behaviors.
Prepared and conducted experimental sessions with over 500 participants in Cognitive and Social psychology labs.

6. Literature Reviews

Here's how psychology research assistants use literature reviews:

Compiled a literature review on facial emotion recognition in people with schizophrenia.
Helped in the development of Psychology experiments by conducting literature reviews.

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7. Behavioral Data

Here's how psychology research assistants use behavioral data:

Streamlined and designed protocols to analyze high-density behavioral data in decision-making.
Tested temporal dependency of behavioral data by hierarchical log-linear models.

8. Statistical Analysis

Here's how psychology research assistants use statistical analysis:

Completed data entry, statistical analysis, data interpretation and presentation of results for peer review and publication.
Prepared study participants for EEG readings and maintained database with available scores for statistical analysis and reporting techniques.

9. Research Studies

Here's how psychology research assistants use research studies:

Orchestrated participant groups for University research studies investigating pro-social behaviors and motivation systems.
Contributed to research studies for facial recognition in cognitive psychology.

10. Human Subjects

Human subjects are human beings used in research studies, which may be medical or non-medical and involve a researcher intervening or only observing. The test may be conducted to determine the effectiveness of a particular drug, a person's reaction to a medical device, or an observation of a person's reaction to waiting in a room for a long period of time.

Here's how psychology research assistants use human subjects:

Certified in the ethical treatment of human participants - CITI Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative: Human Subject Research Curriculum Completion Report.
Facilitated experiments working with human subjects on a study examining the social regulation of emotion on working and long term memory.

11. Analyze Data

Analyze data or data analysis refers to the practice of studying, organizing, and transforming data to make it more useful. It also includes the cleansing of non-useful information which helps in better decision making regarding any particular matter. Analyze data is a practice that is used widely in the field of business, social sciences, and science.

Here's how psychology research assistants use analyze data:

Collaborate with professor and other students to successfully analyze data
Analyze data using formulas and enter final score into spreadsheet.

12. Research Assistants

Here's how psychology research assistants use research assistants:

Trained and directed other research assistants on laboratory protocol and procedures.
Trained research assistants on general procedures and protocol.

13. Research Findings

Here's how psychology research assistants use research findings:

Presented research findings to faculty and students
Attended weekly meetings with professor to discuss research findings, further directions, and progress of current research.

14. Conduct Research

Conduct research includes carrying out investigations, utilizing critical analysis, and developing solutions or hypotheses to a specific issue. You need to develop time management, critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills to improve these.

Here's how psychology research assistants use conduct research:

Conduct research experiment, data entry/ analysis
Maintained certification for the IRB (Instructional Review Board) to conduct research.

15. Experimental Data

Experimental Data is science and engineering data produced by measurements, test methods, and experimental designs. Data is collected and measured through standard objectives.

Here's how psychology research assistants use experimental data:

Provide access to experimental data for faculty researcher and/or supervisor.
Develop experimental data and materials used in conducting research.

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What skills help Psychology Research Assistants find jobs?

Tell us what job you are looking for, we’ll show you what skills employers want.

What skills stand out on psychology research assistant resumes?

Dr. Jelena Sanchez Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Spanish, North Central College

Currently, multilingual skills shine bright in resumes. Finally, the pandemic reality will validate the global currency of languages.

What soft skills should all psychology research assistants possess?

Dr. David LoConto Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology, Interim Department Head, New Mexico State University

These days in the job market, the abilities, as mentioned previously, to understand human behavior, contextualize events, and frame what is occurring. The problems that STEM students have now are designing products for humans but do not have that training. Our students are trained to understand humans at the state, institutional, organizational, group, and individual levels in sociology. This allows our students to find jobs if they desire to gain employment in STEM fields and data analytics in general.

What hard/technical skills are most important for psychology research assistants?

Dr. David LoConto Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology, Interim Department Head, New Mexico State University

Increasingly, we see that the hard skills, due to technology changing so fast, become antiquated quickly. Employees must be retrained yearly or every other year. Therefore, the hard skills have lost some value. We provide our students the opportunity to learn not only statistical packages like SPSS and R, but they have the opportunity to do computational research, textual analysis, and data visualization. This provides our students the opportunity to learn skills they can apply to STEM fields, but our students have the bonus of understanding human behavior. Something that in the workforce is rarely taught.

What psychology research assistant skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?

Matthew Wright Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Physics Department Chair, Director of the Business of Science, Adelphi University

Buy a Raspberry PI or a Beaglebone black and do something amazing with it.
All3dp

What type of skills will young psychology research assistants need?

Sara Church

Lecturer of Psychology, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College

Young graduates should be thinking about trauma competency that includes somatic approaches. Somatic approaches include a person's mind AND body, which is so important when treating stress of any kind. Young graduates also need self-awareness. Young graduates need to know how to interview! They should set up mock interviews to practice. Interviews are important in our field, because the interviewer is getting a feel for what the person would be like in a helping relationship. They need to be well versed in professionalism and be able to set healthy boundaries within their work. Finally, they need to be culturally responsive and open to learning. This field is broad and can act as one, big difficult conversation. Conversations about differences-about behaviors, about people, about groups and institutions. They need to be ready to have these. SMWC has been very intentional about setting their students up for success in this way.

What technical skills for a psychology research assistant stand out to employers?

Sya Kedzior Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Towson University

The ability to understand technical or complex scientific processes and communicate that information with the public is one of the most attractive skills for an entry-level worker to possess. Many employers may not have staff skilled in the latest GIS technologies or social media trends. While the ability to use last year's software or network via Instagram might not seem particularly novel to recent graduates, these are skills less likely to be found in the workforce of even 10 years ago. Geographers are particularly well prepared for today's workforce because they've often had coursework across the "hard" and social sciences, along with training in technical skills (usually GIS or quantitative analysis) and written and oral communication skills. Another skill in high demand today is data collection and analysis. I often talk with potential employers who want to hire people who can develop and administer a public survey, and then analyze and write up the results. That requires understanding human behavior, public communication, and different forms of data analysis. But, these are skills that can be developed in perhaps only a few classes as part of a major or minor in Geography and other cognate fields.

Do you want to know more?

List of psychology research assistant skills to add to your resume

The most important skills for a psychology research assistant resume and required skills for a psychology research assistant to have include:

Data Collection
SPSS
Research Projects
Data Analysis
Psychology Lab
Literature Reviews
Behavioral Data
Statistical Analysis
Research Studies
Human Subjects
Analyze Data
Research Assistants
Research Findings
Conduct Research
Experimental Data
IRB
Research Data

Quantitative Data
Cognitive Psychology
R
EEG
Experimental Design
Informed Consent
Social Psychology
Psychological Research
Literature Searches
Research Lab
Research Design
Research Paper
Research Results
PowerPoint
Qualitative Data
Consent Forms
Input Data

NIH
Survey Data
Symposium
Qualtrics
Research Articles
Computer Programs
Independent Research
Research Subjects
Social Justice
Institutional Review
Research Experiments
Research Conference
Journal Articles
APA
Statistical Data
Electroencephalography

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

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