Overview

The Human Ecology Learning and Problem Solving (HELPS) Lab is a fee-for-service facility at Montana State University-Bozeman that enables the collection of high-quality data for researchers using a variety of social and behavioral methods.

The HELPS Lab is open to the broader community of researchers, with an emphasis on providing tools for studying interactions between human systems and other complex phenomena like ecosystems and public health. The HELPS Lab facilitates the collection of high-quality data via web, mail, personal, and phone surveys; interviews; focus groups; and computer-based experiments.

For more information, please see our flyer.

Our Objectives

At the HELPS Lab we aim to:

  • Improve the productivity and quality of research for investigators and decision-makers;
  • Promote university competitiveness in securing external research funding; 
  • Increase the capacity for social and behavioral research generally and more specifically in the areas of complex and cross-disciplinary research; and 
  • Provide opportunities to enhance research skills for faculty, students, and other investigators.

We meet these objectives by:

  • Consulting with researchers to provide information and cost estimates for use in funding applications;
  • Facilitating the collection of high-quality social and behavioral data for researchers on a fee basis; and
  • Supporting opportunities for researchers to increase their research design knowledge and their research methods skills.