Research Associate at Precision Agriculture for Development (PAD)

Position description

At PxD, Research Associates have opportunities to work closely with PxD and affiliated researchers and substantially contribute to PxD's research programs that test new ideas and measure their impacts.

Responsibilities may include 

• Support the implementation of research activities for one or more workstreams with moderate oversight
• Carry out day-to-day basic data management, including cleaning and merging datasets to prepare them for analysis 
• Produce accurate and organized summaries of data including basic analysis for descriptive statistics and simple regression analysis 
• Support primary data collection, including enumerator training and running high frequency data checks
• Maintain project documentation, including experiment registry entries
• Carry out literature reviews and other desk research when research questions and basic structure are provided
• Fill in frameworks provided with specific information to identify program insights
• Draft survey and focus group discussion instruments when structure and concepts are provided
• Support PxD’s institutional knowledge management and internal learning efforts
• Contribute to internal and external communications to disseminate research findings including briefs, blogs, reports, and presentations
• Support IRB protocol development
• Contribute to funding proposals and project reports
• Assist with partner relations and working with external stakeholders for implementation of field operations

Qualification and experience in the following domains are likely to be important 

• A bachelor’s degree in economics, agricultural economics, public policy, statistics, or a closely related field
• Strong understanding of economics, econometrics, and familiarity with randomized evaluations
• Excellent knowledge of Stata or R or similar software for data analysis
• Experience working on field research in economics in developing countries
• Experience in using SurveyCTO or a similar program for survey design
• Understanding of research ethics for human subjects in the social sciences
• Excellent organizational skills, detail-oriented, and ability to work both independently and collaboratively
• Fluency in English. Demonstrated strong oral and written communication skills
• Ability to work under time pressure and solve problems creatively