Collaborating w/ faculty outside your lab

[Oshawott]

Background: Psychology, new PhD (but completed Master's, same school and faculty member). Supervisor is old and not focused on research as much, hands-off mentorship. I am presently trying to teach myself R and Bayesian analysis and just frequentist stats in general.

Issue: I want to flex my skills and see if I can actually do these analyses I'm learning. The issue is that there isn't a huge repository of existing projects in my own lab I can jump on and data collection takes awhile because of ethics etc. I want to use the skills I'm learning in a real-world project. Is it appropriate to just go to other faculty members and ask them if they have projects they need help on, without any plan to formulate your own project?

 

Edited November 8, 2017 by Oshawott