Will AI replace Social Science Research Assistants?

Many of your tasks are within reach of AI. The role will change, so it pays to act now.

Task exposure to today's AI

58/100

High exposure

This is the occupation's typical task mix. Your own score can be up to 30 points higher or lower depending on how you work: routine share, people contact, judgment and how much you already use AI.

Get your personal score

Will AI replace Social Science Research Assistants?

Not entirely. Today's AI tools can take on about 58% of the typical work in this occupation, mostly: prepare tables, graphs, fact sheets, and written reports summarizing research results. The parts that stay human include: Administer standardized tests to research subjects, or interview them to collect research data.; Recruit and schedule research participants.; Perform descriptive and multivariate statistical analyses of data, using computer software..

People who learn to use AI for the automatable parts keep the edge. The 3-phase plan below shows where to start.

Which tasks AI can take on

The largest tasks in this occupation, their share of the working week, and how much of each today's AI tools can do.

TaskAutomatable

Prepare tables, graphs, fact sheets, and written reports summarizing research results.AI already used 80%

Provide assistance with the preparation of project-related reports, manuscripts, and presentations.AI already used 78%

Verify the accuracy and validity of data entered in databases, correcting any errors. 75%

Perform data entry and other clerical work as required for project completion. 65%

Perform descriptive and multivariate statistical analyses of data, using computer software. 62%

Prepare, manipulate, and manage extensive databases.AI already used 62%

+ 16 more tasks (53% of the week) in the full test.

Your human edge

Administer standardized tests to research subjects, or interview them to collect research data.
Recruit and schedule research participants.
Perform descriptive and multivariate statistical analyses of data, using computer software.

AI tools to try

ChatGPT / Claude for literature and writingAI research tools (e.g. Elicit, Consensus, Semantic Scholar)Copilot for data analysis code (Python, R)

Related roles

A 3-phase AI learning plan

Phase 1

Faster literature and writing

Literature search and summaries with AI, always checked against the papers.
Drafts of methods, reports and grant text.
Reference management and formatting.

Project

Use AI to screen and summarise 40 papers for a literature review section, verify every claim against the PDFs, and log hours saved versus your usual pace.

Phase 2

AI for data analysis

Analysis code in Python or R written with AI help.
Visualisation and statistics explained step by step.
Reproducibility: version code and prompts.

Project

Rebuild one past descriptive-plus-regression analysis as an AI-assisted, version-controlled R or Python script that reproduces every table and figure from raw data in one run.

Phase 3

AI as a research method

Classification, extraction or modelling with AI on your data.
Validate against human labels or ground truth.
Ethics, data protection and disclosure of AI use.

Project

Use an AI model to code 500 open-ended survey responses into themes, compare against 100 human-labelled cases, and report accuracy plus an AI-use and data-protection statement.

Take the free 11-question test