The Clarke Research Group is currently in need of assistants for the academic year who are interested in Science & Technology Studies and in the Sociology of Mental Health, particularly depression. Clarke's research makes use of both of those subfields in order to examine exercise science interventions for depression and anxiety. This project is a discourse analysis of exercise science publications including meta-analyses, systematic reviews, and individual Randomized Controlled Trials that focus on exercise interventions for depression and/or depressive symptoms.
Dr. Clarke is looking for up to 3 undergraduate research assistants to assist with data collection and coding. These undergraduate research assistants will earn course credit for their assistance with my research. Interested students will need to be proficient in using the university library system (online) to assist with searching for relevant publications. Once collected, Dr. Clarke will also need assistance with coding the documents (reading and categorizing portions of the documents) in order to sort the data into an existing template.
Ideally, students be able to spend 3-9 hours per week on this task (3 hrs/week if Dr Clarke can find 3 assistants total, 8-9 if Dr. Clarke can only find 1). Students may earn 1 credit hour for every 3 hours per week of research assistance. This means students will need to carefully consider how many hours per week they can reasonably spend on this research project as an assistant before agreeing to a set number of credit hours for the semester.
Selected student research assistants will be trained in discourse analysis using Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis as well as traditional hand-coding. Students will also have the opportunity to assist with creating my IRB proposal for the next phase of this project, for which they could be assistants for data collection as well if they desired. If students contribute significantly to manuscript preparation (e.g. editing, references, assistance with literature review), they would also earn the opportunity to be listed as co-authors on any resultant publications.
Minimum requirements:
Proficiency in library searches using complex search term combinations and multiple search engines (NOT Google)
Ability to properly identify peer-reviewed journal articles
Basic experience in reading peer-reviewed journal articles in the life sciences
Sophomore status or higher
Preferred qualifications:
Junior or Senior status
Completion of qualitative methods course(s)
CITI certified
Experience with the Ethnography of the University Initiative
Sociology, Psychology, Kinesiology, Community Health majors
Familiarity with literature on depression and/or exercise science
Interested students should send a CV or resume, cover letter (include relevant course and research experience), and 1-2 letters of recommendation to Dr. Caitlin Vitosky Clarke: vitosky@illinois.edu
