The career exploration activities I was engaged in this semester included redacted data research as a form of job shadowing. I learned the process of conducting psychological research and the reality of the challenges and required adjustments present. Having learned about research and how to properly conduct it in the classroom, it seemed that the classroom represented a certain ideal that is not always present in the conduct of research. As a research assistant at Data Redacted for the past year, my colleagues and I have had to adapt the experiment in several ways during data collection. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay My responsibilities as a research assistant in the Visual/Spatial Cognition Lab included managing participants, posting time slots, meeting with participants, gathering informed information consent documents, demographic forms, schedules techniques and maps that participants would draw on together. I would then meet the participants (one per time slot) at the location of our experiment, the Redacted Data at the Redacted Data. I would give participants some brief instructions, ask them to fill out the informed consent and demographics form, and to bring their backpack or bag into our locked office while they filled out the forms. Upon returning, I would give participants a more holistic explanation of what the study would entail for them, how long it would take, and what I needed them to do during the trials. I would then take them through some short practice tests, further explain the procedure, and put them through the actual experiment. Once the experiment was finished, I would take them to our locked office, give them their things, and walk them to the entrance, while I briefed them on the experiment and answered any questions they had. Each participant would take approximately 35-40 minutes, preparing for the time slots would take approximately 10 minutes. After the participant finished a time slot and had run all participants for the day, generally 3-4 a day 2 days a week, I would take all of our equipment back to the lab and close the informed consent documents in our archive locker of the study, organize the data sheets and forms, write the participant number on all your documents and archive everything in the laboratory files. I would then update attendee credits online and make sure all of our equipment was plugged in, turned off, and charging. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a custom essay These responsibilities gave me a lot of individual freedom, since from start to finish I managed the participants myself. In this way, I learned how to lead participants through a study, how each aspect of the experiment should be structured, including written instructions for participants at each stage of the experiment. This was beneficial to me because it helped me understand the complexity of experiments and the need for adaptability and perseverance. We were forced to discard approximately one in fifteen participants' data due to experimenter error, participants not performing well enough on tasks, technological malfunctions, and other various reasons. This need to ignore much of our initial data necessitated some adaptations to the study, including collecting data to compensate for these losses..