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Research Associate

Organization: The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
Apply By: 08 Apr 2025
Location: Coimbatore(Tamil Nadu)
About the Organization
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 1,000 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.
Job Description/Responsibilities
This is a very high ownership role, where your work will majorly involve supporting other RAs in project management in addition to cleaning, organizing and analysing the data collected from the field on a regular basis.
Research Associates work closely with academic researchers and other field staff to perform a variety of tasks including, but not limited to:
Research Design and Data Management
- Designing survey questionnaires, conducting qualitative research, running pilot/backchecking exercises, refining study design and survey instruments
- Ensuring that the project complies with research protocols related to data collection and security
- Supervising data collection and data entry to ensure good data quality
- Work with data sets, prepare and run codes regularly for daily data cleaning and analysis in STATA
- Take ownership of daily data management trackers to ensure seamless flow of information for operational efficiency
- Ability to analyze and interpret data using statistical packages like STATA and produce output, including graphs and table.
Managerial / Operational
- Maintaining relationship with partner organizations at both headquarters and field levels
- Managing teams: Recruit, train, and supervise both field-based and data operations teams consisting of project assistants, field managers, field-based surveyors, data entry operators and other field and office staff
- Overseeing the on-ground implementation of the evaluation in accordance with the research design in association with our partner organization. Further, making sure the project is on track in terms of timelines.
- Liaising with field staff running evaluations and collaborating with them including occasional travel to research field sites; focus of work is to advise on quality control of data collection practices.
Communication
- Assisting in preparation of documents and presentations with graphs and tables for partner organization, donor reporting as well as dissemination activities
- Daily meetings with PIs to share project progress updates
- Any other task as assigned by the PIs
Education Qualification/Required Skills & Experience
- A Bachelor's/Master’s degree in economics, social sciences, public policy, education or related fields
- Proficiency in STATA or other statistical packages (non-negotiable)
- Strong written and verbal communication skills in English
- Demonstrated ability to manage high-level relationships with partner organizations
- Have an entrepreneurial/start-up mindset: Ability to deal with unstructured and changing environments. Are action oriented, self-driven and flexible
- Attentive to detail, analytical, and can work across multiple-task efficiently as required
- Team oriented: Are a reliable team player and can work with a diverse set of people on a daily basis
- Ability to work independently and in rural field locations (travel to nearby field sites as required)
- Willing to move to Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
Desired Qualifications
- Working proficiency in Tamil (strongly preferred)
- Familiarity with randomized controlled trials/clinical trials/quasi-experiments and development research preferred
- Understanding of basic financial terms
- Experience working with rural enterprises
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Last Update: 4 April 2025