What are the roles and responsibilities of research interns/assistants, and what are the skills needed? How can I improve my chances of being selected as a research intern? As someone who has completed three research internships at Cambridge, LSE, and Ashoka, here's my answer:
Broadly, research interns have to contribute to collecting and analyzing data, and writing the manuscript. I've elaborated the skills/tools required for quantitative and qualitative studies below:
For quant studies, knowing how to conduct surveys and experiments through Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey and Google Forms is of use. For qual studies, having conducted interviews and focus group discussions is helpful
For quant studies, having experience in data analysis using tools like SPSS, R, Stata, Python, and
is valuable. For qual studies, having analyzed data using thematic analysis, content analysis, discourse analysis, interpretive phenomenological analysis is beneficial.
Academic writing is the skill required for manuscript writing in both qual and quant studies.
If you do not have these skills, don't worry at all! Labs are usually happy to train their interns in these skills. Moreover, labs look for curiosity, dedication, motivation, willingness to learn, etc. much more than research skills :D