Senior Research Associate - PROSPER Programme

Our vision is of a world better led, a world better served and a world better governed. We are a global school committed to improving the quality of government and public policymaking worldwide, through three routes: teaching current and future leaders; generating research with impact; and engaging with governments and practitioners.

Anchored at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, PROSPER tests scalable, evidence-based solutions – from smarter recruitment and job search tools to digitally enabled income support – to generate measurable gains for workers, firms, and economies. The programme is a multi-country collaboration of researchers from Oxford, Warwick, Duke, Northwestern, Berkeley, Peking, and RAND, J-PAL Africa, the Busara Center for Behavioural Economics, REMIT, and NGO and government partners in Kenya and South Africa. As Senior Research Associate in Development Economics, you will work primarily with the survey fieldwork aspect of the operation, based at JPAL Africa in South Africa and the Busara Centre for Behavioural Economics and REMIT in Kenya. They are currently running three large-scale randomised controlled trials or longitudinal surveys and three more will be launched in the next three years.

You will lead on building systems for ensuring high quality data is collected and appropriately managed; oversee survey and intervention design processes; and oversee the building of effective field operations and management structures.

Responsibilities

• Manage and oversee data collection efforts, including planning logistics for regular in-person and phone surveys.
• Train enumerators and field teams to ensure consistency and accuracy in data collection.
• Lead the design and implementation daily High Frequency Checks (HFCs) to identify and resolve data quality issues in real-time.
• Support the design and implementation of the study at all stages of the randomized evaluation, in collaboration with Principal Investigators (PIs).
• Document the data monitoring process, including any deviations from the original study design.
• Code and troubleshoot surveys using tools such as SurveyCTO, Qualtrics.
• Establish and maintain robust data quality safeguards and auditing systems.
• Manage and extend data management systems to ensure adherence to ethical standards and facilitate the replication of study results.
• Ensure the project complies with all relevant ethical requirements.
• Analyze quantitative data generated by the experiment to produce insights and support reporting needs.
• Supervise the recruitment, induction, task lists and feedback reviews of the projects' RAs.
• In collaboration with PIs, assign tasks and priorities, and monitor performance.
• Oversee the programme budget, including forecasting, expenditure management, and spend monitoring.
• Manage the group’s full grant portfolio, with responsibility for financial reporting and all grant-related contracting.

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• A Master’s degree (or will be nearing completion of) in a quantitative discipline such as economics, statistics, mathematics, public policy, or development studies.
• Solid technical training in experimental methods, survey-based research, and randomised evaluations.
• Strong skills and experience in econometrics and coding with statistical software Stata.
• Considerable experience in at least one data collection platform such as SurveyCTO or Qualtrics.
• Experience managing projects in academic research in economics and/or international development.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
• Meticulous organisational skills, and demonstrated ability to build operational systems.
• Ability to work effectively with cross-cultural research partners.
• Willingness to travel frequently for extended periods to support survey launches across developing-country settings.
• Ability to take initiative without much supervision.

Desired criteria

• Experience in other programming languages (especially Python and R).
• Interest and training in development and behavioral economics.
• Extensive field experience running surveys in low- and middle-income country contexts.
• Leadership potential with the ability to inspire and lead field and lab teams with intelligence, dedication and kindness.

Location: Oxford, in the UK, with considerable time spent in South Africa and Kenya.