Statistical Data Analyst II - Brown School - Social Policy Institute

at  Washington University in St Louis

POSITION SUMMARY

The Social Policy Institute is a university-wide initiative dedicated to addressing pressing social issues through transdisciplinary empirical research, dissemination of evidence-informed policy, and training. The primary areas of research for this position will consist of education and other issues facing children and young adults. The individual will primarily be responsible for: 1) assisting in the development of tools for data collection and analysis; 2) advising on research design and evaluation issues; 3) performing data management activities, including cleaning and quality checks as necessary; 4) performing statistical analyses; 5) collaborating on the writing of research reports, briefs, and scholarly publications; 6) assisting in the reporting of results to external partners; and 7) supervising other employees and research assistants in data collection and analysis activities. The individual will work independently with mentoring from senior staff and statisticians and in collaboration with other project staff.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Graduate degree in public/social policy, education, public health, biostatistics, computer science, sociology, psychology, behavioral science or related field.
• Understanding of appropriate statistical tests for various analysis situations (including, but not limited to, correlation, ANOVA, t-test, chi-square).
• Experience conducting inferential data analyses and developing appropriate graphical displays of data for manuscripts, reports, and presentations.
• Software proficiency: Competency and experience navigating data and utilizing relational databases and reporting tools (Excel, Stata, and R). Competence and experience with Qualtrics or other online survey software. At least one year experience using Stata or other statistical packages to run descriptive analyses.
• Ability to learn and independently perform new applications and procedures.
• Strong analytic skills.
• Attention to detail and accuracy in editing, record-keeping, etc.
• Ability to verbally communicate complex issues with clarity to different types of audiences (e.g., academic, community, etc.).
• Ability to collaborate with others, working independently and with team members, including students, staff and faculty.
• Ability to work effectively with a diverse group of community members, staff, and faculty of varying degrees of technical sophistication.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

Bachelor’s degree in a related field with two years of related experience.

• Contribute to leading data collection and instrument development. Perform quantitative and qualitative data collection and data management tasks, including audits, cleaning, and quality control checks of data as necessary. Oversee data entry tasks performed by others.
• Perform statistical analyses of quantitative data collected. Analyze data in Stata, interpret statistical test results, and summarize findings.
• Support development of research proposals and directions and assist with research design issues.
• Help prepare findings for dissemination in various forms (presentations, papers, reports, briefs, funder materials, etc.). Draft narrative description of results for scholarly journal articles, etc.
• Collaborate on liaising with internal and external research partners and funders to promote partnerships and dissemination; manage other staff and graduate research assistants.
• Perform other duties as assigned.