I
started working in a psychology lab since this semester, and have developed a reputation
of a hard-working and helpful RA in the lab. At first, I was the only new RA
this semester, so I was little nervous when I stated. Despite I had relevant experience,
I was still not familiar with many lab tasks. In order to be involved in the
lab, I tried to be quick learner.
One
of the examples was to use a survey tool called Qualtrics. I’ve never used it
before, but quickly picked it up after watching some tutorials myself even
before my supervisor trained on it, and my supervisor was very pleased that I
was willing to learn new things on my own. Things like this helped me developed
reputation of hrd-working in the lab.
Recruitment
was our major tasks during the first half of the semester. We needed to recruit
150 participants to fill out a 30 minutes long survey for a research, and
unfortunately we had only $100 of funding for recruitment. We set a $100
drawing for all participants, which is not attractive enough. As a new RA, I contacted
a student club that was organizing a fieldtrip to Six Flags, there were two buses,
90 students going to the trip. So I bought many snacks – homemade cookies, donuts
for those students and asked them to fill out the survey on the way to Six
Flags. I recruited about 30 participant that time, and my supervisor was very
impressed.
Another
thing developed my reputation was that I’m willing to help others. Once another
RA was sick but had an urgent lab task, so I volunteered to take up his task.
As return, he took up some of my lab tasks when he recovered.
I’ve never “cash in” my reputation.
I believe that individual’s reputation develops slowly, and the development of
good reputation takes a lot effort. People can gain priceless things while
developing good reputations, such as trust and friendships, and these are what immediate
gains cannot be compared with.
In my case, it is also very
unwise for me to cash in, because I want to continuously work it this lab, and
gain research experience. “Cash in” can also be immoral in some case too,
so I will avoid “cash in” in either career or relationships.
Just on the science of what you did - I believe an underlying assumption in survey research is that the respondents represent a random sample. When recruiting subjects is a difficult matter, what you did about getting those students on a field trip to sign up may make sense. But being a member of whatever the club was likely means there is some affinity among those students, so they are not a random sample. Getting an adequate sample size in this manner thus has some issues with it.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to go to graduate school in psychology, then being an RA as an undergraduate is an excellent credential for that purpose. And getting a good letter of recommendation from the faculty member who is leading the research would really help on your applications.
However, for the sake of argument, here let's say that you wanted to get a job after you graduate instead of going to graduate school. Then you might view the RA position more in terms of what you are getting out of it in the near term, rather than as a credential. Do you enjoy the work you are doing or is most of it kind of mundane and not very interesting? There would be no cashing in if you enjoy the work, because then there is a consumption benefit from the work than can sustain you. There might, however, be a reason to not try as hard if the work is kind of boring. Then you might shirk or quit.
Let me add one further point, that could be potentially in play, though I suspect in your case it isn't. When I was an undergrad I graduated in three and a half years rather than in the usual four. My parents, who were paying my tuition at the time didn't have to pay for the spring semester of my senior year. Then I did some RA work for a political science professor from whom I had taken a class the previous fall semester. That RA work came to late to be a credential on my graduate school applications, but it did teach me some things about the underlying issues the professor cared about as well as about library research needed to study these matters. For you I'm not sure what the implication would ben were you to graduate a semester early, or whether that would have been possible if you took another course or two instead of doing the RA work. But there is always an alternative path to consider as a possibility. Had you taken this particular alternative, perhaps you could have saved on tuition for next semester. Your reputation would never have formed in this case. In that sense, cashing in might have been possible, though you chose not to go that route.
Firstly, I would agree with you that what I did for recruitment is not completely random sampling, but as all of our samples are from UIUC, and as our lab do not have sufficient fundings, many of the participants are friends of lab members who like to do us a free favor, so the issue of sampling here is very hard to avoid. It is true that there are limitations in sampling,so what we can do to avoid the bias is to make the sample size as big as possible.
DeleteMy plan is to go to graduate school, so as you pointed out, being an RA would be a good experience, and there is no reason to cash in. You talked about in certain case it is possible for me to cash in some case, and I agree with you on those points. However I think shirking is not a responsible thing to do, and it should be avoided. Graduating early may be a cash in as well, it is very understandable for people to cash in in this case.However, I'm not able to graduate early, so I did not consider what you pointed here.