Research skills assessment

The Research Skills Assessment aims to assess the academic research skills of the person doing the assignment. Successful evaluation of the assessment is a requirement for admission into the Creative Intelligence & Technology MSc program of Leiden University.

Introduction

Every applicant for the program (hereafter referred to as the candidate) must complete and submit the Research Skills Assessment assignment.

In the context of this assessment, (academic) research refers to:

Doing fundamental and/or knowledge-driven research that aims at contributing new insights to academic discourses. As such, it differs from applied research, that is primarily directed at solving (engineering, societal, commercial etc.) problems.
By taking steps that collectively lead to the contributing of new insights. These steps include conception and formulation of a research idea, literature review, hypothesizing, method development, method execution, critical analysis and concluding, and reporting.
With a quality of work that is expected in academic contexts. Quality of work not only refers to the policies and practices of academic fields, but mainly to displaying of a critical attitude.

The writing assignment detailed below can be done to assess a candidate’s research skills. After independently completing the assignment, a candidate must submit it as part of their application. A positive evaluation of the research skills is a requirement for admission into the Creative Intelligence & Technology MSc program of Leiden University

Writing Assignment

The assignment must be completed under the following conditions:

The work is personally and independently completed by the candidate submitting it.
The work is original in that no part is a replication of another’s work.
Tools that are used are not generative.

The assignment asks to identify an academic topic of your interest and write a compact scientific-style introduction about it that describes its current state, citing exactly five peer-reviewed references. Each of the five references must be cited in the text. The introduction must start with a header “Introduction” and be no more than 700 words (excluding references).

The topic can be from natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences. It cannot be from applied sciences, such as engineering. It must be a “small” academic topic (e.g. mammalian biofluorescence; chronotype effects on relationship satisfaction; humor in Kafka’s writing), and should avoid large topics (e.g. effects of VR in education; cancer immunotherapy; societal changes caused by AI).

Use any common citing and referencing style that you are comfortable with, but include a DOI number in each reference. If a DOI number is not available, then include an HTTP link to the peer-reviewed source or the publisher’s page about it.

Then, propose research that can be done by a graduate of the Creative Intelligence & Technology MSc program in six months full-time work. It must aim to contribute new insights to the academic topic that you describe in the introduction. It can cite the five references of the introduction, but cannot introduce new ones. The proposal must follow the introduction, start with a header “Proposed Research”, and be no more than 400 words (excluding references).

Additional requirements:

At the top of your paper, place an appropriate and informative title (dare to be creative).
Ensure that your full name is at the top of the paper, plus the date of completion.
Write in your own words only; do not copy-paste sentences from sources. Copying text from other articles is not allowed; not even individual sentences. The use of generative AI / tools is not allowed, also not for textual improvement.
Do not quote from source articles, use your own words only.
Do not include an abstract.
Do not add a personal reflection, just summarize the field.

Submission

Submit the final work as a single PDF document, as part of your application process.

Upon submission, the candidate must verify several statements regarding the independence and origins of the work. The submitted work may be subjected to tools verifying its origins and originality. Results of these tools are part of the work’s evaluation.