Short-Term Research Assistant Service

Spring and summer 2018 members can apply to use the services of a 10-hour per week graduate research assistant for a short period of time (i.e., typically up to a total of 40 hours).  

All MPC faculty and research staff members are eligible to use this service.  Priority will be given to projects that (a) have a population studies focus, broadly construed; (b) can quickly result in a publication and/or grant proposal; (c) can clearly benefit from short-term research assistance; and (d) do not already have external funding. Preference will be given to junior faculty.

Population Studies Trainees Luke Smith and Chris Levesque will serve as the graduate RAs in 2018.  Their basic skill sets and experiences are described below.

To apply for this service, please send an email to mpctrain@umn.edu and include the following information:

  1. Your name and departmental affiliation

  2. Details about your project: A title and a short (~2 paragraph) description of the overall project's goals and activities

  3. Information about the product that will result (e.g., a publication, a grant proposal, a conference presentation) and when that product will be produced

  4. A statement about current external funding support for the project

  5. A description of the specific activities the research assistant would do and (if not obvious) how they fit into the overall project

  6. The number of weeks the research assistant's services would be needed (at 10 hours per week) and a proposed starting date

Luke's Skills and Experiences

Statistical Packages: Competent in SAS and STATA. Has used R a little.  Has used GIS and has a little experience in analysis w/ GIS having taken a course in spatial analysis in infectious disease epidemiology.

Methods: Has used / been trained in a variety of analytic methods, including regression (linear, logistic, poisson, multinomial, ordinal, and cox).  Has been trained in nested and longitudinal data and random coefficient modeling.  Has used GEE and GLM models and understands the issues of missing data, patterns of missingness, and imputation.  In addition to practical applications, he has received formal theoretical instruction that should help in understanding the methods. Additionally, by way of his instruction as a Population Studies Trainee, he's been introduced to a variety of methods for population modelling.

 Chris' Skills and Experiences

Statistical packages:  Stata, QGIS, basic knowledge in Carto, R, & SPSS. Also have experience in ArcGIS from geospatial analysis course in undergrad.
Methods: Trained in OLS and logistic regression, event history (survival) analysis, multilevel modeling; geospatial analysis including chloropleth maps, spatial joins, geoprocessing, hex bins, etc.; received core sociological methods and theory training (e.g. sampling and case selection, intersectional methods and survey design).