The RT-DEG Research Analyst will support research teams and projects around the world who perform rigorous studies of interventions aimed at reducing poverty. He or she will join the Research Transparency, Data Ethics, and Governance team and contribute to advancing IPA’s Research Transparency Initiative. The goals of the initiative include: 1) Documenting IPA’s research projects being conducted around the world by helping investigators register their trials and pre-analysis plans in the American Economic Association (AEA) trial registry, preparing their data for re-use by the research community, and publishing the data in a central repository; 2) Helping researchers to check and document statistical analysis code prior to publication; 3) Providing organization-wide guidelines and training on reproducible research to assist IPA’s 21 country offices.

Additionally, this Research Analyst will work with cross-functional teams such as members of Country Programs (Directors, Research Managers, Research Coordinators, and Research Associates) to ensure timely support is given to Country Programs regarding all IRB/ethics issues. This role will also work closely with members of IPA’s Institutional Review Board.

The Research Analyst will conduct data curation for IPA studies. This involves reviewing research data to ensure protection of study participants’ confidentiality, editing data files and program code, and publishing data and code to IPA’s research repository.

Additionally, the Research Analyst will ensure the timely and accurate administration of IPA’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), in supporting promotion of research ethics and human subject’s protection at IPA.

The RT-DEG Research Analyst will work with a diverse group of research teams and projects in IPA’s 21 country offices

The Research Analyst will be based in either Washington, D.C. or New York City, NY. The Research Analyst must be willing and able to travel to IPA country offices when necessary.

Responsibilities:

Curating and checking data to release in IPA’s data repository (55%):

• Examining and checking data/code for usability prior to release and supporting IPA researchers with data publication.
• Running “code checks” as needed to ensure that shared data and code can reproduce tables in publications of IPA studies.
• Independently fielding requests from researchers for code checks, seeking out studies with data to be shared and communicating with researchers about their data and other materials.
• Managing further staff who conduct data curation and code checks.
• Encouraging and supporting researchers’ registration of their projects and publications to the American Economic Association (AEA) trial registry.
• Work with partner organizations, such as the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), on a combined Dataverse repository.

Administering research ethics’ Institutional Review Board (IRB) at IPA (30%)

• Administration and review of IPA’s IRB, which includes conducting first review of all protocols submitted to IPA’s IRB (original applications, amendments, renewals and unexpected events) and determining risk level with support from Research Manager and IRB Chair.
• Remain up-to-date on IRB regulations as they apply to IPA IRB, in collaboration with the Research Manager and IPA IRB External Chair.
• Lead administration of monthly IRB meetings, which includes sending calendar invites, taking notes, sending materials to the IRB members and keeping accurate reports for IRB purposes.
• Continuously improve IRB processes (updating of forms and process in Salesforce) and for developing metrics to track the efficiency and effectiveness of IPA IRB
• Support the Research Manager and External IRB Chair to build a culture of research ethics at IPA. This includes conducting literature reviews of ethics regulations and ethics oversight within the international development sector, writing/supporting writing of memos, blog posts and white papers on ethical research.
• Support capacity building of IPA staff globally for research ethics and IRB by developing training materials for IRB and ethics.

Contributing to IPA’s commitment to strong social science research methods (15%)

• Supporting IPA’s Chief Research and Methods Officer by co-administering the Research Review Committee
• Producing training materials to disseminate to staff in IPA’s country offices as needed, including technical guidelines on data and code management as well as tutorials in using Github and other tools.
• Supporting the development of and conducting training sessions during Global Staff Trainings and other transparency workshops (as funding permits)
• Supporting grant-writing and communication with funders, together with the Research Manager, on topics of research transparency and open science.
• Qualifications
• A Bachelor’s degree in economics, public policy, social science or related fields
• Experience conducting analyses using statistical software in a work setting (strong Stata skills are a firm requirement, additional familiarity with R or similar languages is a plus).
• High attention to detail and organizational ability.
• Ability to work well with a team in a collegial environment.
• Interest in learning about research ethics in international setting required
• Excellent management and organizational skills and willingness to perform administrative tasks
• Fluency in English with strong communication skills

Preferred:

• Understanding of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) design.
• Familiarity with open science and research transparency concepts like pre-registration, data publication, data governance, and research replication.
• Experience working with Institutional Review Boards or other human subject’s protection agencies
• Training and/or certification in human subject’s protection, corporate and research ethics, or cybersecurity
• Experience conducting research in a developing country
• Familiarity with GitHub, Salesforce, Formstack, Box, and Boxcryptor.

Source:https://www.poverty-action.org/job/research-analyst-research-transparency-data-ethics-and-governance-rt-deg