Information about the Human Emotions Lab (Dr. Carroll Izard)

 

Attention: Psychology Majors and Minors!

Are you interested in going to graduate school in psychology or social work? Do you enjoy interacting with families, particularly mothers and their young children? Getting specialized research experience as an undergraduate is one important thing you can do to show your interest in and commitment to your chosen field. Being an Undergraduate Research Assistant will give you valuable research skills, the opportunity to work closely with persons specializing in your field, a deeper understanding of scientific research, and a great opportunity to get a detailed letter of recommendation for graduate school.

During the fall of 2008, the Human Emotions Lab (McKinly 181) directed by Dr. Carroll Izard, will be studying children’s emotion knowledge and social competence in Wilmington Head Start Centers.As an Undergraduate Research Assistant working on this project, you would be involved in interviewing parents about their parenting styles and their children’s behavior problems. We also have opportunities for undergraduate research assistants to interview children and observe children in their classrooms.

This would be a hands-on, high responsibility research experience that would provide an opportunity to interact directly with low-income, ethnically-diverse mothers and their young children. Please note that the experience may require some travel to Wilmington; but we will be pairing you up into teams so having a car is preferable but not necessary. In addition, you may be involved in other research tasks, such as putting together testing packets or entering data into a statistical program.

As you add and drop courses to perfect your fall schedule, please consider adding us to your schedule!

We have a few requirements for working in the lab:

(1) You should be a psychology major/minor, individual and family studies major, or early education major and have a GPA of at least 3.0.

(2) We ask that you sign up for 3 credits, which translates to up to 9 hours of work per week. We will work with you to create a schedule that fits with your other commitments but we would like you to keep two mornings (9-1:00 for child interviews and observations) per week available. For those working on parent interviews, we would like you to keep one morning (8-12:00) and one evening (4-8:00) per week available.

(3) The most important thing we ask of you is reliability, i.e., showing up where and when you are scheduled for work.

(4) At the end of the semester, we have a short paper requirement, 3-5 pages, reviewing a research article.

If you are interested in being an Undergraduate Research Assistant for our lab, please email our research technician, Sarahfaye Heckler, at sfaye@psych.udel.edu for more information!