A team approach to research offers undergraduates opportunity to be co-authors on cannabis study paper

Many researchers work through their final year of graduate school before seeing their name on an academic paper. That day came sooner than expected for Anna Lester and Christina Chen, when the two were undergraduate students at the Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction Research and Treatment at the KU Life Span Institute.

“I remember being really excited about working on a paper for publication, especially because it seemed like an opportunity that not many undergraduates get,” said Lester, who is now a graduate student at Washburn University.

The paper, “Exploring the suitability of cannabis use with next-day responsibilities: A behavioral-economic and qualitative study,” was published in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior in September and looked at how responsibilities impact choices about marijuana consumption.

“The findings are interesting on their own given their relevance to reducing harms from cannabis use, but I think the real appeal of this project is it was truly an all-hands effort,” said Michael Amlung, associate professor and director of the center’s Behavioral Economics and Addictions Neuroscience (BEAN) Laboratory. “This is the rare example of engaging trainees at every level at KU in a research project that led to a publication in top-tier behavior analysis journal."

Students in his lab are expected to do more than data entry – even as undergraduate students – working alongside faculty, graduate students and a postdoctoral research fellow.

Last year, Chen and Lester had started coding participants’ qualitative responses for the thematic analysis when they learned that Amlung would seek to include their names among those listed as authors on the paper announcing the team’s findings.  

Lester said that working in the BEAN Lab encouraged her interest in research and focused the direction of career.  

“It helped my confidence immensely as a researcher,” Lester said, describing her experience at the KU BEAN lab. “I learned that I love research by being a part of the lab and will continue to pursue it in graduate school and in my career.”

As co-author of a paper that was under review at the time, it also helped her stand out as she applied for graduate school, and she credited it in part for getting into the clinical psychology program at Washburn University. As undergraduates, Lester and Chen hadn’t realized when they joined the project that it would lead to authorship, but Amlung said they earned the distinction with their contributions.

“What made this experience unique for Anna and Christina is they were sitting at the table when we were having those hard conversations: ‘How are we going to code this data? What's this paper going to look like? How are you going to interpret these results?’”

While most students in the BEAN Lab are pursuing graduate degrees, the lab is open to undergraduate students planning to pursue medical school or graduate school in psychology, behavioral science or neuroscience. Students aren’t always involved in a project from start to finish. Sometimes they’ll contribute to research for a semester or two before graduating or moving on to another lab, Amlung said.  

"It's perfectly fine if students only get exposure to certain parts of the research; they can still learn a lot from that,” Amlung said. "My general philosophy is that if students are going to eventually want to go into a career in behavioral science, clinical psychology or a related area, they need to have a strong understanding of what's actually involved.”