Applying to provide a future student placement
Thank you for your interest in applying to provide a placement. To apply, or if you would like more details, please get in touch at jennifer.a.l.mcgowan@ucl.ac.uk. Below you can find our Frequently Asked Questions with more details on the placement process.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What kind of background do students on the programme have?
The MSci in Psychology provides students with the necessary skills and knowledge to gain chartered status as a Psychologist with the British Psychological Society. Students are taught the processes of intervention development, implementation, and evaluation as well as qualitative and quantitative analysis skills.
- What kind of questions can you help with?
The placement should involve one psychology-related research question of interest to your organisation. This could be, for example, “What are customers looking for in a product?”, “How do individuals cope with a specific illness or experience?”, “How effective is this message?”, “How do we measure our impact?”, “How does this procedure or product work in practice?”, or “What should be our focus or priorities moving forward?”. Such questions can be helpful for directing an organisation’s development, or for evidencing impact when looking to make a case for new procedures, expansion, or additional funding.
Placements can involve (as examples): the assessment or evaluation of a current service or procedure, development or validation of questionnaire or scoring algorithm, or interviewing stakeholders or staff about their experiences or expectations. The project must involve analysis of data (existing or new) which can be completed within the project time-frame. Data collected by the student may be combined with or compared to other new or existing data, or you can provide existing data for the student to work from.
Examples of previous projects can be found on our student project blog. We are happy to work with you to formulate an appropriate question and associated project which meets both your needs and ours.
Projects must observe the Code of Ethics and Conduct of the British Psychological Society and the student will be supported to complete an ethics form at the start of the placement to provide evidence that any data analysed was collected with appropriate ethical approval.
- What will we receive from the placement?
Two outputs are confirmed for every placement: a dissertation research report and a blog post on UCL’s blog site, which will be provided at the end of their project (May). The student will provide you with a report of their findings which is yours to use as you see fit. Students can also provide you with an internal report and/or presentation of their findings or other output as fits your needs (e.g. client-facing literature, social media). Students are additionally encouraged to work towards a peer reviewed publication of their research project. UCL’s team can also help you with dissemination of the findings if this would be helpful.
All outputs, including the expected date of completion, should be agreed with the student. Please notify the UCL team of any requested outputs so that we can review the quality and monitor dissemination.
- How long does the placement last?
The placement takes place from October until the end of March. During this period the student will work on their project 2-3 days a week, including any at-home work associated with their project (e.g. writing up). This generally involves working with you directly between 1-2 days a week, and independent work for the remaining hours. The first term (October to December) is generally spent developing the project plan and applying for ethical approval, and the second half (January to March) involves collecting and analysing the data.
If appropriate, the placement can begin before this period, and can be continued following submission of the dissertation on agreement between the student and placement provider. If you’d like to commence an early placement, we are happy to facilitate that for you.
The data collection must generally be finished by February in order for the dissertation report to be written on time. It’s important that the student has the data necessary to complete their dissertation by their deadline in May. The dissertation accounts for 50% of their final year grade, and so this is extremely important to the well-being of our students.
- What support would we need to provide?
Each student will also be assigned an internal supervisor at UCL to help with any experimental design, data analysis, or write up questions. You will be asked to nominate a placement supervisor to supervise the student in the development of their project in line with your organisation’s needs. The supervisor is expected to work with the student at least once a week. They will not be required to have expertise in research methods.
It’s also helpful if you have a plan in mind for the participants that you would like to recruit (if requesting new data). For example do you expect students to work with a predetermined group which you have access to, are you looking for population-level data, or are you working with a partner group of a specific demographic group?
- Does the student need to be paid for their work?
No, there is no requirement to pay students. You may need to pay for data collection, if you choose to pay your participants for completion or expect travel costs to be involved.
- Can I offer placements for more than one student?
Yes, you are welcome to offer placements to more than 1 students. Students can work on larger problems in teams, or individually on related research projects (e.g. one on questionnaires and one on interviews). You can also provide placements that require support over several years, which would then be divided between students in each year’s cohort.
- How do students choose their placements?
Organisations should express interest in providing a placement no later than December for the following year’s cohort. In January students are provided with a list of all the placements on offer, along with the placement contact information. Students will contact the placement that they are most interested in and provide you with their CV and cover letter. You are free to accept or reject applications as and when they apply or wait until the end of February and review all the student applications at once. You may also choose to interview the students if you wish, in which case it is then up to the student and provider to set a time to meet.
You will then be asked to complete some legal documents confirming that you agree to provide the placement to the student/s. This will include a risk assessment and health and safety questionnaire. This needs to be completed no later than the start of October.
- What happens if my placement is not chosen?
If your placement is not chosen then we will get in touch to let you know. You can choose to withdraw your placement, to offer it the following academic year, or we can talk you through alternative options to see your project realised. This could involve referring your project to another department, or more formal research partnership routes.
10. I’m interested. How do I get in touch?
If you’re interested in providing a placement or have queries not covered in this document then please contact the MSci lead, Dr Jennifer McGowan, at the address below.
Dr Jennifer McGowan
Associate Professor, Experimental Psychology