Research assistant for a project on early parenting

The Interacting Minds Centre, Department of Clinical Medicine at Faculty of Health at Aarhus University invites applications for a position as a research assistant for a research project, ‘

The New Parent Sleep Experience’

. The project is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation:

http://bit.ly/Carlsberg_project , with a start date

1st Sept 2024 or as soon as possible thereafter. The position is a fixed-term 18-month full-time position.

The Interacting Minds Center (IMC)

The project will be hosted at IMC, a center which provides a transdisciplinary platform to study human interaction. The candidate will have the opportunity to interact and collaborate with researchers from the humanities, social sciences, cognitive science, biology and medicine, among other fields. The IMC hosts weekly guest lectures and regular intensive workshops, with both international and national speakers. The Center has affiliated researchers across numerous faculties and departments at Aarhus University, with access to excellent research facilities and infrastructure at the Cognition and Behaviour Lab, and the Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience.

You can read more about the center

here

and about the faculty

here

.

Your job responsibilities

As a research assistant, your primary tasks are related to data analysis, data interpretation and dissemination. The successful candidate is expected to contribute to the overall objectives of the project. The position will require a candidate who is enthusiastic about complex data analysis.Data analysis and interpretation will be supported by student assistants, so there will be an opportunity to supervise the work of junior team members. The successful candidate will be supported in planning future career activities.

The research project 
Our knowledge of early parenting comes largely from studies of mothers, with fathers either overlooked or under-emphasized. As fathers constitute 50% of parents, and have become increasingly involved in childcare, this project will explore similarities and differences between men and women’s experiences in early parenthood. The project uses legislative changes to parental leave (Barsel) in August 2022 as a natural experiment. We compare the behaviour of couples with babies born before and after the increase in earmarked paternity leave from 2 weeks to 11 weeks. Data collected to date includes surveys, to large scale app-based assessments of real-world parenting behaviour, and experimental tasks.
In your daily work, you will have close interaction and collaboration with senior colleagues at the Department of Culture, Cognition and Computation. As a research group, we schedule weekly lab meetings to discuss progress and provide ongoing support.

Your main tasks will consist of:

• Data analysis, including all stages from data cleaning, analysis to interpretation
• Report writing and dissemination tasks
• Literature reviewing

You will report to Christine Parsons (Project Lead).

Your competences

You have a background within the research area of psychology, medicine, Cognitive Science, Data Science or a related field. You will have experience with analysis of human participant data and documented experience with data analysis in R or Python. Finally, the candidate should have completed their Master’s degree by the position start date.

Experience or the following skills will be considered an advantage:

• Data management
• Good data analysis skills, including advanced statistical and methodological knowledge (such as multilevel modelling, Structural Equation modelling etc.)
• Basic technical skills and knowledge (e.g., general programming skills in R, Python or equivalent)

As a person, you have good interpersonal skills, are friendly and helpful and able to contribute to a good work environment. We expect you to be fluent in oral and written English.

Questions about the position

If you have any questions about the position, please contact Associate Professor Christine Parsons:  tel.: +4587162127. Applicants are encouraged to write with any informal enquiries.

Your place of work will be the Interacting Minds Centre, Department of Clinical Medicine, Nobelparken, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 7, 3. Etage. DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.

We expect to conduct interviews at the end of June 2024. Shortlisting is used.