Sociology Undergraduate Research Program
SURP is a quarter-long program that gives current Sociology majors the opportunity to gain research experience and contribute to ongoing projects led by faculty and graduate students.
Participating students will receive course credit (SOC 499) according to the number of hours worked, or for completing specific tasks. Projects offer between 2 and 5 credits. All SOC 499 credits are graded C/NC.
SURP runs during Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer quarters. Please check this page for current project descriptions, which will update quarterly.
Applications for Autumn 2026 open on Monday, September 14 and close on Monday, September 21. Students may apply to up to three projects each quarter. For more information, please see the SURP FAQ below.
Application timeline:
- September 14–21: Accepting applications for Autumn 2026
- September 28–October 2: Applicants receive offers
Please carefully review the project descriptions and requirements below before applying.
Autumn 2026 opportunities:
Project 1: Studying Aging Using Performance Aging Curves in Sports
Professor Hyungmin Cha (faculty mentor)
Project Goals: This project examines how athletic performance changes over the life course by constructing and analyzing aging curves in professional sports (e.g., MLB and European soccer leagues). The goal is to identify when performance peaks, how rapidly it declines, and how these patterns vary across players and contexts. Moving beyond descriptive sports analytics, the project applies sociological and demographic perspectives to investigate how factors such as nationality, race/ethnicity, career trajectories, and organizational contexts shape performance over time. SURP research assistants will gain practical experience in data acquisition, reproducible data management, and the foundations of longitudinal research.
Credits: 3
Hiring: 1–2 students
Research Work:
- Build and prepare the dataset that underpins the project. This includes
- (1) web scraping player-level data from publicly available sports databases (e.g., performance statistics, demographics, and career histories)
- (2) cleaning and harmonizing the data across sources (e.g., resolving inconsistencies in player names, standardizing variables, and handling missing values)
- (3) constructing a well-documented, analysis-ready dataset.
- Assist in developing a clear codebook (variable definitions, coding decisions) and conducting preliminary descriptive analyses (e.g., summary statistics and simple visualizations of performance by age).
Required Skills:
- Data analysis
- Web scrapping
- Basic knowledge in sports
Preferred Skills:
- Data cleaning
Project 2: Media Coverage of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
Professor Theresa Rocha Beardall (faculty mentor)
Project Goals: Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls receive uneven public attention, and media coverage helps shape whose stories become visible, credible, and urgent. This project examines how news coverage frames these cases, whose voices appear in reporting, and how patterns of attention shift across outlets and time. Students will build a 40 year dataset of news articles and prepare it for qualitative coding.
Credits: 2–5
Hiring: 5–6 students
Research Work:
- Build a national inventory of Tribal and other relevant news outlets and archives, with publication metadata and access pathways
- Collect news articles on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls across the 40 year study window, using shared search and filing protocols
- Log each article in a structured dataset with standardized fields such as outlet, date, location, headline, and archive link
- Screen articles for inclusion using agreed criteria, documenting edge cases and decisions
Required Skills:
- Interest in Indigenous studies and gender justice
- Proficiency in G-Suite and Excel
- Strong English reading and writing skills
- Attention to detail
- Cultural awareness and sensitivity
Preferred Skills:
- Experience with qualitative data software
- Interest or experience in webscraping
Project 3: End of an Era? The Fight Over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education
Maxine Wright (graduate student mentor)
Project Goals: How has DEI policy been shaped at the federal level over time? How has the framing and messaging around DEI and its importance shifted with national values and priorities? This prong of a dissertation project focuses on archival analysis to answer these questions and deepen understanding of federal frameworks to better contextualize ethnographic fieldwork and interview data.
Credits: 2–3
Hiring: 3–4 students
Research Work:
- Qualitative coding using Atlas.ti software
- Writing analytic memos
- Completing structured activities to move from coding to identifying emergent themes
Required Skills:
- Strong reading and writing skills
Preferred Skills:
- Knowledge of qualitative coding and/or Atlas.ti
- Responsiveness
- Transparency
Project 4: Marketing the Redwoods: Parks, Settler Colonial Logics, and Racialization
Lindsay Maurer (graduate student mentor)
Project Goals: This project examines how structures of settler colonialism organize racialization, focusing on settler imaginaries about park lands. Using historical archival data, the project traces the early development of the California State Park system. The project asks: How did early 20th century settler colonial park-building projects shape racialization in rural Mendocino County, California? Undergraduate students will collect, organize and clean qualitative and quantitative data related to the development of California State Park system in the 1920s and 1930s.
Credits: 2–5
Hiring: 1–3 students
Research Work:
- Collect, organize, and clean news articles, PR materials, legislation, and demographic data related to the development of California State Park system
- Literature review
- If interested, students may assist with data analysis in ArcGIS and qualitative coding in MAXQDA.
Required Skills:
- Organized, attention to detail
- Experience in Excel and G-Suite
- Availability for co-working (in person or online) for at least six hours per week
Preferred Skills:
- Experience with qualitative data collection and coding
- Experience with ArcGIS, R, or MAXQDA
- Prior coursework in Indigenous studies, SOC 362, or SOC 379
Project 5: The Social Construction of Housing Markets
Sadie Carlson (graduate student mentor)
Project Goals: The housing we have access to shapes family structures, stratification, and homelessness, among many other factors that shape society. At the crux of deciding what gets built, where, and when, are real estate developers. Through interviews and ethnographic methods, this research will be uncovering how developer decision making is constructing housing markets with a focus on uneven development and housing affordability.
Credits: 2
Hiring: 1 student
Research Work:
- Identify participants for interviews
- Contact participants during recruitment
- Shadow interviews and attend networking events (optional)
- Code data
- Retrieve and prepare data from Planning Department public hearing minutes
- Gather news articles and blogs pertaining to housing development.
Required Skills:
- You will learn any skills needed
Preferred Skills:
- Atlas ti
- Excel
- R coding
Project 6: Sex Ed for Autistic and Intellectually Disabled Youth: Comparing Implementation across two school districts in WA State
Ryan DeCarsky (postdoctoral scholar mentor)
Project Goals: In collaboration with UW’s WA INCLUDE Collaborative, Seattle Children’s Hospital, and UW’s Institute on Human Development and Disability, this project examines how special education teachers understand and implement sexual health education in Washington State. Using questionnaires and interviews in two school districts, we will explore what curricula educators use, how they adapt instruction, and what training and support they receive. We will also examine how stigma, infantilization, and the desexualization of Autistic and IDD youth may shape instruction. The findings will identify promising practices, gaps in support, and opportunities to strengthen accessible, inclusive, and affirming sexual health education.
Credits: 4
Hiring: 2–4 students
Research Work:
- Interviewing
- Transcribing
- Data-entry
- Note-taking
- Literature reviewing
Required Skills:
- Comfortable conducting professional interviews with school teacher
- Ability to hear audio and transcribe interviews
Preferred Skills:
- Data analysis
- Qualitative coding
Project 7: Comparing Human and LLM Topic Model Labeling
Adam Visokay (postdoctoral scholar mentor)
Project Goals: I am looking for an advanced undergraduate who is interested in text as data and the application of language models to social science research to help with literature review, manual coding, and running AI experiments.
Credits: 3
Hiring: 1–3 students
Research Work:
- Literature review
- Manual coding
- AI annotation
- Drafting and revising manuscripts
Required Skills:
- Comfortable conducting professional interviews with school teacher
- Ability to hear audio and transcribe interviews
Preferred Skills:
- Data analysis
- Qualitative coding
Applications will open on Monday, September 14th and close on Monday, September 21st. Decisions will be released the week of September 28–October 2.
Autumn 2026 application form coming soon!
SURP FAQs:
Can I apply to more than one project?
Yes, students can apply for up to three projects. Please rank your project preference in your applications.
Can I participate in SURP without registering?
No, all SURP research assistants are required to be registered for a minimum of 2 credits.
What is SOC 499?
Students will be registered for SOC 499 to receive academic credit for SURP projects.
Do I have to pay tuition for SURP credits?
Yes, you have to pay tuition to register for SOC 499.
Does SOC 499 fulfill Sociology requirements?
Yes, students can use up to 5 credits of SOC 499 towards SOC elective requirements.
My project offers a flexible number of credits. How should I decide what number of credits to register for?
Consider a few different factors:
- How many hours of work do you plan to do per week? Students are typically expected to work about x hours/week per credit.
- How many other credits do you plan to take this quarter? You can enroll in a maximum of x credits per quarter?
- Do you plan to continue participating in SURP in future quarters? If so, we recommend registering for fewer credits so that you can spread out your SOC 499 credits across multiple quarters. Students can use up to 5 credits of SOC 499 toward SOC elective requirements.
Do I need to reapply to SURP if I was an RA last quarter?
Yes, students need to apply for each quarter that they wish to participate in a SURP project.
Understanding Homelessness in King County Project
WINTER 2026 SOC 499 B (SLN: 22158): Research Assistant Registration
We have opportunities for undergraduate students to join Professor Almquist's team working on counting unsheltered people experiencing homelessness, using respondent driven sampling (RDS). Several positions are available, and students decide how many credits they want to sign up for. The work commitment increases with each additional credit selected. The registration request form has additional details.
Description of Research
The initial research focuses on collecting data on people experiencing homelessness in King County. This data will be used to estimate the total number of people who are unsheltered in King County and analyze their characteristics. Data will also be collected on subgroups (e.g. by race, gender, veteran status, age, etc.) within the larger group.
Role of Undergraduate RAs in project
Undergraduate RAs will serve as data collectors. They will receive training on data collection procedures and sensitivity. After training, they will sit at tables at specific public library locations, receive respondents and set them up to take the surveys. The RAs will also manage referrals, tracking, and allocation of incentives.
To participate in this project, follow the steps below.
- Academic Credit Registration: SPR 2026 SOC 499 B SLN: 19570 RDS Registration Request Form