Research Associate at Precision Development (PxD)

Responsibilities (including but not limited to):

The role will grow as you develop, but you will start by focusing on the following key responsibilities: 

• Work with the team leadership and other colleagues in scoping, designing, piloting, and scaling evidence-backed digital agriculture services, including spending time with farmers in the field to ensure that services are closely aligned with user needs.
• Assist in the development and implementation of new research ideas and projects that support PxD’s programs and partners. 
• Conduct qualitative and quantitative data collection (including farmer focus groups, interviews, and quantitative surveys) and data cleaning. 
• Produce accurate and organized summaries of data, including basic analysis for descriptive statistics and simple regression analysis.
• Carry out literature reviews and other desk research, providing input on research questions and structure. 
• Develop and update project documentation regularly.
• Support partner relations and work with external stakeholders to implement program operations.
• Support compliance with IRB protocols and relevant in-country research permission requirements.
• Contribute to funding proposals and project reports.
• Contribute and support internal and external communications to disseminate project results and research findings, including briefs, blogs, reports, and presentations. 
• Contribute to PxD’s institutional knowledge management and internal learning efforts.

Requirements:

The ideal candidate will have: 

• Bachelor’s degree in economics, public policy, international development, or closely related fields.
• Ability to draw inferences from data to identify pathways for program improvement (e.g., call center productivity, feedback of users to an SMS campaign, looking at usage statistics).
• Strong understanding of economics, econometrics, and familiarity with randomized evaluations.
• Excellent knowledge of Stata or R, or similar software for data analysis
• Experience in using SurveyCTO/ODK or a similar program for survey design.
• Experience in a multi-faceted role, with the ability to balance and prioritize across multiple projects and stakeholders.
• Understanding and application of research ethics for human subjects in the social sciences.
• Strong writing and oral communication skills in English, with attention to detail and advanced writing and presentation skills.
• Willingness to travel to field sites in Kenya.