Glossary
Social Science Research Assistant Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential social science research assistant terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key social science research assistant vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in social science research assistant training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Citation manager
- Organizes references.
- Codebook
- Variable guide.
- Confidentiality
- Keeping data private.
- Data cleaning
- Fixing errors.
- Informed consent
- Permission to participate.
- IRB
- Research ethics board.
- Literature review
- Summary of past research.
- PI
- Principal investigator.
- Pilot study
- Small trial run.
- Protocol
- Study procedures.
- Qualitative research
- Non-numeric study.
- Quantitative research
- Numeric study.
- Recruitment
- Finding participants.
- Sample
- Group studied.
- Variable
- Measured item.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Social Science Research Assistant practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Social Science Research Assistant training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.