Global Research Officer

The Global Research Officer role in Forcier is the rare research position that allows a person to both to live wherever is best for them and to remain engaged in primary research conducted in developing countries. The role is ideal for a self-motivated researcher who enjoys and takes ownership of solving technical research and program-management problems that arise in countries like South Sudan, Mozambique, DRC, and Somalia.

As part of the Global Technical Team, the Global Research Officer will serve several key roles in Forcier. The first is in providing solutions to research-related questions or requests from Forcier’s country offices or the business development team. These questions or requests often are related to research design, sampling, quality assurance, or statistical techniques.

The second role is that of a program manager for projects that Forcier wins, which are outside of our country offices. For these projects, the Research Officer will take on every step of the research process which involves working on research design, inception, questionnaire development, survey programming, training of survey teams, quality assurance, analysis, and report writing. The ability to balance client needs, best practices in monitoring and evaluation, and budget will be crucial to successfully executing our global research projects.

Lastly, the Global Research Officer should serve as a capacity builder and teacher for the researchers in our company. Researchers come to our company with a wide breadth of skills and knowledge which serve to make our teams better, but there are fundamentals which are required of every researcher leading a project and additional skills that are needed for them to progress. Part of the role of a Research Officer will be to identify areas in which additional training is required and to build training materials and modules, and occasionally provide virtual or in-person training to researchers to help them fulfill our goal of providing clients with the highest quality data possible from people living in some of the world’s most challenging environments.

The Research Officer role at Forcier is designed for someone who is passionate about providing data for clients to make evidence-based decisions, and who has the flexibility to switch fluidly between various research domains during the course of a work day. The role is an ideal fit for someone looking for an opportunity to apply statistics, coding, management, and teaching skills to the challenge of conducting high-quality research in developing countries.

This position requires travel up to 4 months a year and potentially a training in South Sudan.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Project-based support (80%)

● Consulting with research staff to provide technical advice at various stages in the research process, including the proposal writing process, overall study design, sampling, questionnaire development, data collection, sample performance, analysis and reporting

● For projects in countries outside of the countries in which we have offices, project managing the study from the beginning to the end of the research process. Project management responsibilities may include communicating with clients and managing expectations, managing subcontractors, handling budgets and cash requests, adhering to proposed level of effort, and meeting deliverable points.

● In collaboration with the Director of the Global Research Team (GRT), ensuring the overall quality of research deliverables (i.e. datasets and reports) being undertaken by Forcier across all country offices by reviewing products prior to client-delivery or by orchestrating and managing the review of such products by other qualified technical staff.

● Assisting in the implementation of “pure analysis” contracts secured for Forcier Global

● Providing remote surge-capacity to field offices for billable tasks including questionnaire-writing, inception report writing, data quality control, data analysis, and final report writing. In-person support to the field offices may also be required throughout the year and travel to the field offices for 1 to 2 months each year may be expected .

Management and capacity building (20%)

● Collaborate with the Director of the GRT in the creation of technical guides and self-guided training tools (pages on our Wiki-style resource website, quizzes, etc.) for all Forcier offices to follow covering sampling, questionnaire design, field-level quality controls, data cleaning, coding, data processing, and basic analytics.

● Collaborate with the Director of the GRT in the implementation of technical capacity-building among local researchers, including the creation, refinement, and administration of trainings on technical aspects of the research process.

● In coordination with the Director of the GRT, mentor and manage part-time remote Analysts and Assistant Analysts.

Requirements

M.A. degree and at least 3 years of experience, or PhD and at least 1 year of experience. Appropriate graduate level education will be in political science, anthropology, international development, statistics, public health, or a related field. Irrespective of degree field, graduate level training in research methods and statistics is required.

Required Skills

• Graduate-level coursework in econometrics and inferential statistics, ideally including applied regression analysis, survey data analysis, data visualization, and power analysis
• Advanced knowledge of STATA required
• Demonstrated ability to clean and interpret real-world data, generating publishable insights
• Experience in communicating with clients, managing teams, and human resources to ensure successful completion of projects and objectives
• French or Portuguese speaking candidates will be given priority