I received an interview for a global health education and research position as an RA (research assistant)- the job description says mixed methods are used
I was wondering:
- Should i email them to ask them if i should anticipate any coding test (SPSS or R) ahead of time as the job may require me to use quantitative statistical software and i may need to brush up on my skills beforehand?
- The job description isn’t specific enough in terms of what projects they are working on and what kind of gaps the research assistants are expected to help fill in – the job description is a bit generalized and not specific enough to what projects are currently ongoing and which projects they are currently working on. Should i ask them to provide me a bit more info on what projects they are currently working on that need further expansion? or direct me to some resources/links that explain the projects that are currently going on that they need help with?
Would asking these questions ruin my chances or reflect poorly on me?
Comments
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I’m new to public health, EU based and my background is medicine not social science so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
I don’t think it’s rude at all to inquire about their expectations or interview structure. Here different institutions use different programs so enquiring would be quite normal.
I’ve never heard of coding tests being given unless the role is advertised as biostatistician. However I’ve been told US based researchers are expected to do more of their own statistical analysis, here many researchers get support from a dedicated biostats department.
Most places here would use Stata if they wanted more complicated analytics done, so anywhere that uses SPSS wouldn’t expect much coding. However JASP is gaining ground it’s got a similar interface to SBSS but is based on R, but is usable with only basic knowledge of R.
Source: Jasp info.