Skills
Social Science Research Assistant Skills & Tools
The technical skills, people skills and tools employers look for in social science research assistants, and how to build and show them.
Social Science Research Assistants need technical skills such as data collection, data cleaning, and statistics basics, plus people skills like organization and reliability. They also use tools such as Qualtrics and SPSS or R.
Technical (hard) skills
- Data collection
- Data cleaning
- Statistics basics
- Literature review
- Survey software
- Research ethics
People (soft) skills
- Organization
- Reliability
- Communication
- Attention to detail
Tools, equipment and technology
- Qualtrics
- SPSS or R
- Excel
- REDCap
- Zotero
- NVivo
Skills in action: common tasks
These step-by-step guides show how social science research assistants put their skills to work:
- How to clean a survey dataset
- How to run a research session with participants
- How to do a literature search
How to show these skills on a resume
- Lead your skills section with the technical skills from the job posting, for example, “Data collection” and “Data cleaning.”
- Prove soft skills with results: instead of listing “organization,” describe a situation where you used it.
- List credentials such as CITI human subjects training near the top, with the issuing organization and date.
- Use the employer’s vocabulary. Our social science research assistant glossary covers the terms hiring managers expect.
How to build these skills
Formal training, supervised practice and certification are the most direct routes. Our Social Science Research Assistant training introduces each of these skills with plain-language lessons, procedures and a final knowledge check: a strong foundation before hands-on training or your first day.