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EMPLOYER PROFILE

We are a small research team based in Austin, Texas that is made up of passionate and intellectually curious researchers. We conduct policy-relevant research at the district, state, and federal levels, exploring interesting education research questions informed by some of the most pressing, challenging problems confronting educators, researchers, and policymakers today. Our work is funded through contracts with local, state, and federal agencies, and through grants from government agencies and private funders. We regularly partner with some of the largest social policy research companies in the world.

We are looking to grow our team with a Research Assistant who shares our energy and enthusiasm for tackling complex problem in education research and who is looking for a collaborative environment with opportunities to support various research projects across multiple project teams. We are searching for candidates with an interest in public education, education research, evaluation of education programs, and learning about improving how schools operate.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

The successful candidate will support senior researchers on our research and evaluation team in various capacities, including:

• -Supporting large-scale survey research projects: This involves developing outreach materials, coordinating with hundreds of schools, contacting non-respondents (either by phone or via email), managing incentive structures, programming online surveys (including user-testing and programming survey logic), tracking response rates, and conducting follow-up activities. This also involves supporting our lead survey coordinator during large-scale survey launches, including packaging materials, cross-checking addresses, tracking delivery of shipments, responding to inquiries, providing support to campus survey liaisons, and supporting data collection sites during the survey administration period.
• -Supporting qualitative data collection across multiple projects: This includes coordinating with school district staff to schedule site work, coordinating the research team calendar, organizing schedules for multiple research teams across many districts at one time, developing systems for tracking data collection and data transfer, and supporting qualitative data analysis.
• -Contributing to the collection and analysis of qualitative data, which may involve conducting site visits to K-12 schools and Institutes of Higher Education to collect classroom observation data and to conduct interviews with teachers, staff and school leaders. Supporting other qualitative data collection, including conducting phone interviews and facilitating focus groups.
• -Conducting analysis of qualitative data, including interview and focus group transcripts, narrative responses to open-ended survey questions and classroom observation data.
• -Supporting analytic and reporting functions across numerous projects, including simple data supports (e.g., downloading and converting files or manual data entry), web-searching, conducting background research, performing quality-control checks on reported results, copy-editing, etc.
• -Assisting project directors with project management tasks, including developing monthly status reports, budget documents, assembling materials for accessing confidential data (for districts or state education agencies), etc.
• -Assisting senior researchers with the development of research and grant proposals. This involves conducting background research on programs, performing literature reviews, reviewing funded grant abstracts and/or full proposals, and compiling proposal materials as needed.

REQUIRED AND PREFERRED SKILLS

Required Skills

The successful candidate must:

• -Have a bachelor’s degree in a social science discipline (e.g., psychology, political science/government, economics, sociology). Coursework in research methods is valued.
• -Be able to communicate clearly and confidently with teachers, campus and district administrators, and college administrators and faculty.
• -Be flexible and willing to contribute to a wide range of different types of research projects.
• -Be intellectually curious and interested in developing new skills.
• -Be able to handle multiple projects simultaneously, and be able to juggle and re-order priorities as necessary.
• -Be comfortable with a fast-paced environment.
• -Be interested in public education and in applied research and evaluation.

Preferred, but not essential skills:

• -Experience working with school districts and school district staff.
• -Be able to travel about 15-20% of the time (though this may be in concentrated cycles of travel, with no travel at other times).
• -Have experience conducting, or participating in, research interviews, focus groups, or conducting classroom observations.
• -Have experience analyzing qualitative data using analysis software tools (e.g., NVivo, Dedoose).

EMPLOYMENT CONDITIONS, EXPECTATIONS, AND ASSURANCES

This exempt full-time position will require 40 hours of work per week, usually Monday through Friday. Flexible hours and work schedules will be considered after individual establishes a track record of strong performance. This position requires that the incumbent sit or stand for extended periods of time while working on a computer.

This position is in Austin, Texas now or post-pandemic. Gibson offers a competitive salary, opportunities for performance bonuses, generous vacation and personal leave, retirement benefits that include 401(k) matching, employer contributions to health and life insurance. All employment with Gibson is at will.

The salary range for this position is $45,000 to $65,000, and will be commensurate with the candidate's experience and expertise.

Gibson Consulting Group, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. To apply please send a cover letter and CV to: jobs@gibsonconsult.com.

EMPLOYER PROFILE

We are a small team of passionate and intellectually curious social scientists specializing in education research and based in Austin, Texas. We conduct policy-relevant education research at the district, state, and federal levels, exploring interesting questions informed by some of the most pressing, challenging problems confronting educators, researchers, and policymakers today. Our work is funded through contracts with local, state, and federal agencies, and through grants from government agencies and private funders. We regularly partner with some of the largest social policy research companies in the world.

SUMMARY

This position will be responsible for conducting education research and evaluating education programs for school districts, states, regional service centers, education research centers, and other public and private organizations. The position will primarily, but not exclusively, support the quantitative work within the research and evaluation portfolio.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Managing, cleaning, and analyzing large-scale district, state, or other public and private educational datasets, including:
• Executing all data management and statistical analysis in an explicit and reproducible fashion using annotated and documented scripts.
• Writing efficient, parsimonious, and robust code for data preparation, analysis, and reporting (including looping and working with macros).
• Assembling panel data, conducting quality control checks, producing descriptive statistics, and selecting and fitting appropriate statistical models.
• Communicating results of statistical analyses through written reports, presentations, briefings, customized static scorecards, dynamic, interactive dashboard, and other medium for dissemination.
• Designing evaluation frameworks that measure the impact of programs on interim and long-term outcomes.
• Providing statistical consulting to clients regarding the appropriate use of existing data.
• Contributing expertise to the development of evaluation or research proposals in response to competitive Request for Proposals or grant funding opportunities issued by school districts, state education agencies, the federal government, and private foundations.
• Supporting large-scale multi-site data collection (district administrative data, student/staff/parent survey data). This includes writing scripts to efficiently import, check, clean, and standardize often messy and incomplete data from numerous districts, colleges, or universities. These scripts should be easy to update with new and corrected data and clearly document coding decisions and reasoning.
• Developing, and aligning, research protocols, including surveys, and interview and focus group guides.

REQUIRED SKILLS

• Advanced Stata programming skills (though R will be considered and experience with Python is a plus).
• Demonstrated experience managing and cleaning large, complex datasets (candidates will be required to provide sample scripts).
• Recent experience through coursework or applied research projects with statistical and econometric methods commonly used in social science research.
• Familiarity with the principles of sound research design.

PREFERRED SKILLS

• Experience in the education sector.
• Experience with quasi-experimental methods for observational data.
• A passion for data management and preparation as well as the belief that each new data management project is an opportunity to write better code and learn something new.
• Experience automating the production of reports from a statistical program.
• Experience building interactive dashboards (e.g., Shiny or Dash).
• Experience with psychometric analyses.
• Experience translating complex statistical concepts and research findings into understandable, and meaningful results.

EMPLOYMENT CONDITIONS, EXPECTATIONS, AND ASSURANCES

This exempt full-time position will require 40 hours of work per week, usually Monday through Friday. Flexible hours and work schedules will be considered after individual establishes a track record of strong performance. This position requires that the incumbent sit or stand for extended periods of time while working on a computer. The ability to travel occasionally is required.

Candidates are not required to live in Austin, Texas now or post-pandemic. Gibson offers a competitive salary, opportunities for performance bonuses, generous vacation and personal leave, retirement benefits that include 401(k) matching, employer contributions to health and life insurance. All employment with Gibson is at will.

The salary range for this position is $65,000 to $85,000, and will be commensurate with the candidate's experience and expertise.

Gibson Consulting Group, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. To apply please send a cover letter and CV to: jobs@gibsonconsult.com.