Department of Applied Social Sciences
Research Assistant (several posts)
(Ref. 260730016)
[Appointment period: each for twelve months initially, with possibility of further appointment]
Duties
The appointees will assist the project leader in the research projects - “Understanding and promoting healthy lifestyles among secondary school students” and/or “Youth development and wellbeing in the AI and digital society: A PolyU-SEU collaborative research initiative”. They will be required to:
(a) assist in the preparation of research instruments, such as interview protocols and questionnaires;
(b) conduct literature review;
(c) liaise with different organisations to support recruitment of participants;
(d) collect and analyse quantitative and qualitative data;
(e) assist in programme development and evaluation;
(f) assist in report writing and manuscript preparation; and
(g) perform any other duties as assigned the Head of Unit or his/her delegates.
Qualifications
Applicants should:
(a) have an honours degree, preferably in Psychology, Social Work, Public Health, Education, Computational Social Science or other related disciplines or an equivalent qualification;
(b) have a good command of both written and spoken English and Chinese, with fluency in Cantonese and Putonghua;
(c) have strong statistical knowledge and data analysis skills;
(d) have research experience and/or training in data collection and analysis;
(e) have experience or training in intensive longitudinal data analysis and application of machine learning techniques to structured numerical and unstructured textual data;
(f) have good knowledge in quantitative, qualitative, and computational methods, including inferential statistics and causal inference using statistical software such as Mplus, Stata, or R;
(g) be proficient in using Python for data processing and text mining, and traditional qualitative techniques such as thematic analysis and interview coding;
(h) be familiar with statistical methods including autoregressive models, structural equation modeling (SEM), dynamic SEM, psychological network analysis;
(i) have strong research interests in lifestyle medicine, youth development, digitally mediated program development and evaluation;
(j) have a strong sense of responsibility and good interpersonal skills; and
(k) be a good team player and able to work independently.
Applicants are invited to contact Prof. Yu Lu via email at lu.yu@polyu.edu.hk for further information.
Conditions of Service
A highly competitive remuneration package will be offered.
Consideration of applications will commence on 14 August 2026 until the positions are filled.
Posting date: 30 July 2026