Designing your own research project?

[iiddnn]

I think this question has been asked before but i had a slightly different perspective. In regards to research, have any of you done own research project? At my undergraduate institution there are A LOT of students so getting into a lab is hard. I was thinking of designing my own research project related to psychology or something and getting a psych professor to mentor us. Does anyone have any experience with this?

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[mistafab]

If you are new to research, I suggest that you dive into a project that a mentor already has started. It is tough to design any meaningful research by yourself if you do not know the game. Plus, learning how true research is conducted, the barriers to getting started, and the process of evaluation in science is a learned - not innate trait.

If you have some knowledge already, and just want to do a fun project as sort of an academic/hobby that you can work on, then by all means do your thing.

 

[ndafife]

You don't get to design your own project until you establish yourself as someone who can 1) actually design a project 2) follow through. There are exceptions everywhere, but someone isn't going to take time to mentor someone who has never done research with a project of their own design

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I designed two projects but neither of them were bench research or experiments involving humans. I had a mentor for each one, but I did everything, including for the second one, running experiments and simulations.