Research Analyst at International Rescue Committee

Job Description

The Airbel Impact lab designs, tests, and scales life-changing, cost-effective solutions for people affected by conflict and disaster. Nutrition is a team in the health technical unit comprised of technical advisors and specialists providing technical assistance to country programs and organizational thought leadership in nutrition. Together, Airbel and Nutrition have identified Tackling Child Malnutrition: Scaling innovations that improve access, coverage and cost-effectiveness of acute malnutrition treatment in children under five as a Global Research and Innovation Priority (GRIP) to focus energy over the coming years in order to generate a set of breakthroughs to radically improve client outcomes and change the humanitarian sector.

To achieve our vision, the Nutrition GRIP will accelerate action against malnutrition by transforming the way treatment is delivered to increase coverage and sustained recovery for children in fragile and humanitarian contexts by:

Generating operational and clinical evidence of the effectiveness of combined protocol, community health worker delivery of acute malnutrition treatment, family MUAC (i.e. simplified approaches) and combinations of the three innovations

Advancing IRC technical and thought leadership on simplified approaches by building strategic partnerships, leading key coalitions, and providing technical guidance internally and to the sector through research dissemination, direct technical assistance and creating and sharing technical guidance and tools

Create an enabling environment at a global and national policy level to implement innovative approaches at scale

Job Overview/Summary:

The Data Science Research Assistant will ensure high quality data collection, management and analysis for research relating to nutrition including operational research and randomized controlled trials. Under the supervision of the Data Science Researcher, they will design, implement, and monitor the systems required to capture, store and clean data as well as conduct analyses needed to inform programming and policy advocacy.  

Major Responsibilities:

• Support Data Management Systems
• Program data collection and monitoring tools
• Provide field teams with access to monitoring data to assist in program implementation
• Manage and update data architecture that captures, transfers, stores, and merges data from numerous remote locations across fragile and conflict affected countries
• Ensure adherence to research standards particularly in relation to data use and confidentiality
• Implement and adjust procedures to monitor data quality and completeness and to clean data
• Develop data documentation including codebooks
• Plan Data Analysis and Analyze Data
• Ensure production of user-friendly analytic files
• Design data analysis plans to routinely report key programmatic indicators and research outcomes; conduct data analysis according to plans as needed
• Develop data visualizations as needed
• Conduct ad hoc data analyses for research, programming, reporting, business development and external communications
• Support and Develop Innovative Data Quality Management Tools
• Develop and revise tools to assist field teams in monitoring data quality, such as anonymous reporting tools, monitoring protocols and other systems based on feedback from field teams
• Assess improvements in data quality based on each of those tools
• Estimate prior data quality based on improvements generated

Key Working Relationships:

• Position Reports to: Data Science Researcher
• Position directly supervises:  N/A
• Other Internal and/or external contacts:
• Internal: Health Unit Technical Advisors working on nutrition, R&I team members working on nutrition priority, Research practice team members

External:  N/A

Qualifications: 

• Education: Three years of relevant experience or a master’s degree in field related to data management and analysis, with a background in public health preferred.
• Demonstrated Skills and Competencies: Demonstrated experience (3-4 years) collecting, managing and analyzing complex data, ideally in resource limited settings.  Excellent problem solving and communication skills. Ability to work independently.
• Technical Expertise: High proficiency with Excel and STATA or R, familiarity with survey and monitoring technology preferred
• Field Experience: Familiarity with and willingness to travel to fragile / conflict-affected contexts. 
• Teamwork: Able to work with remote, multi-cultural, and multi-disciplinary teams
• Training Skills: Able to discuss technical topics with non-technical audiences
• Language Skills: English required; French proficiency preferred
• Working Environment:  Travel up to 30% of the time