Finding Paid Research Work
Finding paid research work can be a worthwhile step to take after graduating. It can be a great way to prepare for graduate school, to build up your skills while transitioning to a related field like non-profit work or data analysis, or (possibly!) for its own sake. Here I’ll tell you a little bit about my own experiences.
There are a few things that I should be candid about. These positions do not pay very much money. I’ve been working on my team for four years and live in a very expensive city, and I make less than $50,000 a year. My wife, who has a similar skill-set but works in the private sector, is able to make much more. Even staff members (non-PhD, non-faculty) on my team who have been working here for almost ten years don’t make a lot more than I do.
Secondly, there are limited opportunities for explicit professional advancement without additional education. Any healthy work environment will try to let you work on the projects that are interesting to you, and will give you opportunities to take on more responsibility as you grow, but the bureaucracy of a university has an obvious incentive to reward education. As a result, even as your work changes, there will only be so many explicit promotions that you’ll qualify for, regardless of how long you’ve worked or what skills you’ve picked up, unless you get more education. You will never get to be a Principal Investigator on a research project, for example, if you are not a faculty member.
Of course, there are many positive things, too. I think my work is interesting and helpful. I work with smart, interesting people on tough problems. As you are thinking about your professional life, think about how you want to spend your time, what you expect to get in return, and what you can do without. Only you can decide your tolerance for the kinds of things listed above, and you may not even know until you get out into the workforce. It’ll be a journey, so don’t expect to have all of those questions answered now!
All that said, I can give you some advice for how to find and succeed in a paid research position. First off, look for opportunities in applied science. I’ve held paid positions at two different organizations, and both have done applied work. Sometimes this is called “community psychology” or “implementation science.” This means that we work closely with mental health provider agencies and with government bodies to evaluate real world social programs and help improve their practice. On a large scale, this can mean working with an entire state to look for ways their mental health or child welfare system is funneling at-risk children into inappropriate services. On a small scale, this can mean helping a nearby community mental health center learn whether or not their clients are satisfied with their services.
Funding for this kind of work is generally steady, and these teams need full-time professionals – not student interns – to interact with the broader working world in which they operate. So, this is one area where you can find paid full-time work.
If you’d rather do basic science – for example, research about emotions or cognition, I would encourage you to think again about graduate school. There may be paid positions in basic science labs, but I would guess they are few and far between, as student interns and graduate students can more easily complete the kinds of tasks necessary.
If this does sound like interesting work, though, you can look for positions at the following locations:
- Universities
- Government agencies
- Social Services
- Child Welfare
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health
- Justice
- Large hospitals
- Large non-profit organizations
Another thing you can do is look for opportunities by skill. Whenever I poke around to see what jobs are out there, I start by searching for “SPSS.” This is a specific skillset I have that many others don’t and that, moreover, is most often associated with social science and public-sector work. If you feel comfortable with your SPSS skills, do the same. If you have another skill or a program that you feel proficient in, try searching by that instead. Searching by skill, rather than title, can help sort out similar-sounding, but ultimately un-related positions, like Market Analysts.
Lastly, look for opportunities in cities with BIG research universities and/or science and health industries. Some examples include Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Boulder, Los Angeles, and Ann Arbor.
Remember to look for titles such as the ones listed below:
- Research Assistant
- Research Coordinator
- Data Analyst
- Program Evaluator
- Quality Improvement / Quality Assurance [Something]
Ultimately, however, if you want to advance in a research or data-focused career, you will probably eventually want to go back to school. These opportunities will give you invaluable experience, both in skill building and in learning what the working world of research is actually like. But managerial positions in any environment will generally require a graduate degree.
I hope this will prove helpful to you in your quest. Good luck!
Spencer Hensley is currently a Research Study Coordinator at the University of Washington Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He joined the Interactive Measurement Group in Fall 2010, after receiving his B.A. in Psychology from Gonzaga University in 2009.