Researcher, Human and Community Development

Researcher, Human and Community Development at American Institutes for Research

Join American Institutes for Research (AIR) as a Researcher with our Human and Community Development program to foster pathways for young people, families, and communities to thrive through the generation, dissemination, and application of evidence. This position will focus on prevention science with an emphasis on preventing violence and other forms of harmful behaviors in the military. This role will support teams aiming to build the infrastructure and the evidence for prevention, including evaluation planning, data analysis, data visualization, and dissemination. We are especially interested in candidates with experience adapting prevention science to the military environment, primary prevention of violence and harmful behaviors, and leveraging military data and systems. Candidates with relevant lived experience, including military service, are encouraged to apply.

Related projects focus around one or more areas, including but not limited to:

Content Areas

• Primary prevention of violence, such as intimate partner and sexual violence, child maltreatment and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and violence that impacts youth and community.
• Suicide prevention and mental health promotion.
• Military communities, readiness, and resilience.
• Systems change, including organizational and culture change in the military and other community-serving systems.
• Public health workforce competencies and career pipelines.
• Data visualization and dissemination.

Candidates hired for this position may work remotely within the United States (U.S.) or from one of our U.S. office locations. This does not include U.S. territories.

About AIR

Established in 1946, with headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, AIR is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit institution that conducts behavioral and social science research and delivers technical assistance to solve some of the most urgent challenges in the U.S. and around the world. We generate evidence and apply data-driven solutions that expand opportunities and improve lives for all.

Responsibilities

The responsibilities for the position include:

• Manage day-to-day project work and operations, and maintain positive and collaborative relationships.
• Support tasks and projects using evidence-based frameworks, rigorous quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods designs.
• Provide input on appropriate planning, research methods, analysis, and reporting.
• Support and collaborate with partners in ways that build their research and evaluation capacity.
• Demonstrate military competence and sensitivity in all activities and interactions with colleagues, partners, and project participants.
• Conceptualize problems and identify questions in prevention research and evaluation, and collaborate in designing solutions to address them.
• Contribute to the development of study designs, research questions, indicators, survey questionnaires, or interview protocols that align to analytic plans.
• Analyze, interpret, and report on complex qualitative and/or quantitative data using appropriate methods.
• Write reports and other documents that are clear, concise, and contribute to the field.
• Adapt prevention science best practices to meet communities where they are.
• Support the development of tools that connect the dots between prevention science and military environments.
• Communicate clearly with partners and represent AIR in a professional manner.
• Write reports to describe and interpret findings for clients.

Qualifications

Education, Knowledge, and Experience:

• PhD in a related subject area (Economics, Statistics, Public Policy, Public Health, Human Development, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, or related field), or master’s degree with a minimum of 4 years of relevant experience as outlined above.
• Experience contributing to rigorous research and evaluation studies that address public health issues, including preventing violence.
• Experience working with military populations.
• Experience working with military data and other data related to health and human serving systems.
• Experience with data collection activities from the field using a variety of methodologies and data collection techniques such as interviews, focus groups, observations, and/or survey research.
• Experience managing project and/or task teams on research and evaluation projects is preferred, but not required.
• Experience in business development is preferred, but not required.
• Experience with Python is preferred, but not required.

Skills

• Ability to conduct quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods data analysis activities and knowledge of one or more data analytic software packages (e.g., R, SPSS, EXCEL, STATA, NViVO and Access), and open to learning other software as required by different projects.
• Strong interpersonal skills to work in a fluid, team environment.
• Ability to support best practices in prevention science and adapt these to the military environment.
• Ability to interpret data and communicate research findings clearly to a range of audiences in writing and through presentations.
• Flexibility and comfort with evolving environments.

Key skills/competency

• Prevention science
• Military populations
• Data analysis
• Program evaluation
• Public health
• Quantitative methods
• Qualitative methods
• Research design
• Violence prevention
• Report writing