Are you interested in learning how to collect a wide variety of data? Do you want to participate in research trying to understand the psychology underlying persuasion and health behavior? Do you want to learn more about communication neuroscience? Get to know our team and complete your internship with us!
We are currently looking for help with the following project:
When Public Health Campaigns Warn You, but Your Friends Like to Party – Connecting Psychology,Communication Science, and Neuroscience to Understand Complex Real-Life Health Decisions
What this project is about: Multiple competing factors like anti-alcohol campaigns and party-loving friends influence daily health behavior. Social media, in particular, is a context in which we may encounter competing sources of information on the same topic. Yet, we often design and evaluate health communication campaigns in isolation, comparing them to other types of campaigns to find the most promising one instead of to their real-world competitors such as alcohol marketing and interactions with friends about drinking experiences. This project combines communication science, psychology and neuroscience to understand how young adults make decisions about risky drinking in response to mixed information about alcohol from different sources encountered on social media. The study includes a longitudinal field experiment with daily mobile diaries, an fMRI scan, several survey measurements, and a FitBit component.
What can you expect?: Data collection for this project is currently underway. We are looking for one or two people who are interested in learning about how to collect a wide variety of data. In addition, given the complexity of the datasets (e.g. measures on social media use, drinking behavior, responses to messaging, physical activity), there are opportunities to contribute new research questions and hypotheses to the project (e.g. through pre-registration and secondary data analysis). Finally, we hope that you can participate in data anlaysis and write-up.
Expertise or a specific interest in fMRI data collection and analysis is not required. However, for those who are interested, the project offers opportunities to get practical experience with collecting fMRI data (including scanner operator training), data managment/pre-processing, and analysis.
Who are we looking for?: We are looking for 1-2 research master students in communication science, students of Brain & Cognition at the University of Amsterdam (or related fields). Ideally, we are looking for individuals with great attention to detail, excitement for research, and willingness to interact with study participants (e.g. via e-mail and in in-person appointments). An affinity with quantitative data and data analysis is a big plus. Knowledge of neuroimaging and neuroscience is not required, but those with expertise can choose to become more involved in that part of the project.
To learn more, please contact Dr. Christin Scholz (c.scholz [at] uva.nl).
