Job Description
Practice:
R4D’s Evaluation and Adaptive Learning Team (E&AL) conducts targeted research using methods such as randomized control trials (RCTs), formative research, and lean testing to answer questions relevant to donor and practitioner strategies, help partners use monitoring systems to get valuable feedback in real-time, and work with partners to design, experiment with, and evaluate solutions to accelerate their impact.
The E&AL Team seeks a Senior Program Associate (SPA) to aid in research analysis and presentation using quantitative and qualitative methods. The successful applicant will clean, process, and analyze data gathered by ongoing activities and provide research, project management, and administrative support. The SPA will play a critical team function across technical, operational, and administrative tasks depending on workload and project cycles, providing support to all team members on a wide array of tasks as needed including knowledge management, presentations, and analyses.
We seek an entrepreneurial, strategic, and creative individual to help us take this work forward during an exciting juncture of rapid growth within our portfolio. The opportunity is a chance to work with a highly collaborative team that embraces innovation and learning together, taking ownership over critical components of the team’s operations.
This position is based in Washington D.C., but may require significant travel. The SPA will report to a Senior Program Officer.
Responsibilities:
Responsibilities will encompass a range of tasks related to research implementation, data analysis, project management, and communications.
Research implementation responsibilities:
- Contribute to the design of data collection activities, including the drafting of concept notes and other design documents
- Conduct literature reviews and formative research, including the facilitation of key informant interviews and focus group discussions
- Support development of interview protocols and survey tools for mixed-methods research
- Participate in the implementation of data collection activities, including attending interviewer trainings, monitoring incoming data from interviewers, and troubleshooting challenges in coordination with other team members
- Contribute to drafting proposals and funder deliverables
- Other research support as necessary
Data, programming, analysis, and knowledge management responsibilities:
- Clean, analyze, validate, manage, and share quantitative and qualitative data using statistical or other data-processing software
- Write excellent, efficient, reproducible, and clearly annotated code in Stata or R
- Code, organize, and run atlas.ti or nVivo programs
- Import/export data from and to other data management systems
- Generate coherent statistical and narrative analyses and accompanying tables
- Implement econometric models designed by researchers
- Support development of pre-analysis plans
- Organize data into repositories with appropriate tags and code to comply with funder requirements and ensure appropriate knowledge management
- Support data-quality checks for ongoing work
Project management and communications responsibilities:
- Support a range of project management and administrative tasks, including: developing contracts, budgeting and expenditure tracking, and funder progress reports; organizing meetings and workshops; coordinating travel arrangements; facilitating IRB submissions
- Foster current and future collaborative relationships with country and technical partners
- Support the creation of highly polished presentations, reports, briefing materials, and other products such as blog posts, newsletters, meeting summaries, thought pieces, and e-communications on analysis and key topics of interest
Qualifications
- BA + 3 years or MA + 1 year of relevant professional experience
- Strong academic record in statistics, economics, mathematics, computer science, or public administration, public policy, public health, or related discipline
- Enthusiastic about joining a diverse and inclusive work environment
- Ability to function flexibly and independently and have a strong commitment to excellence and attention to detail
- Knowledge of and experience with both quantitative and qualitative research methods
- Excellent quantitative coding skills (R/Stata or similar)
- Experience with qualitative coding software, such as atlas.ti or nVivo, preferred, but not required
- Familiarity with impact evaluation methods and data collection tools
- Experience standardizing data sets to a common format and using data repositories for knowledge management
- Strong writer and oral communicator in English with a proven track record of preparing presentations and reports, as well as an ability to describe technical problems and solutions to a non-technical audience
- Experience working within a multi-disciplinary team including researchers, analysts, and programmers
- Energy, professionalism, and composure under pressure
- Ability to set priorities and handle multiple, competing time and resource demands
- Willingness to travel internationally
About the Organization
Results for Development (R4D) is a leading non-profit global development partner. We collaborate with change agents around the world — government officials, civil society leaders and social innovators — to create strong systems that support healthy, educated people. We help our partners move from knowing their goal to knowing how to reach it. We combine global expertise in health, education and nutrition with analytic rigor, practical support for decision-making and implementation and access to peer problem-solving networks. Together with our partners, we build self-sustaining systems that serve everyone and deliver lasting results. Then we share what we learn so others can achieve results for development, too.
We have a unique and vibrant culture at R4D. Diversity, equity and inclusion are at the heart of our work environment and help advance our mission. Diversity—of ideas, identities, perspectives and backgrounds—is vital to who we are and what we do. We seek people who embrace these values and will help reinforce them. Our work culture is collaborative, creative and entrepreneurial. We operate based on trust and respect. Teams across the organization frequently collaborate on programmatic work and support each other in continuously building a better R4D.
