Lead Advisor, Monitoring, Evaluation, Research & Learning (P5)

Summary

Save the Children’s U.S. Programs (USP) division is committed to ensuring that all children in rural America have a healthy, strong foundation to thrive as learners and in life. Our contribution to a full cradle-to-career continuum is focused on the early years, birth through elementary school; and our goals are to increase kindergarten readiness and grade-level literacy and math proficiency for children in under-resourced rural communities. Save the Children also does whatever it takes to be there for children in emergencies and crises. Whether natural or manmade, Save the Children is committed to supporting as long as it takes to help children and families recover from their losses, restore their lives and build resilience for years to come.

Save the Children is seeking a Lead Advisor; Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning to lead early childhood education and psychosocial evaluations; analyze complex quantitative program data; and lead the writing of external facing research. Save the Children adapts programs. You will work closely with program design and implementation teams to develop appropriate monitoring tools to use evidence to improve program quality. You will mentor and collaborate closely with other members of US Programs’ evaluation team, playing the role of a senior technical expert on the team.

 

What You’ll Be Doing (Essential Duties)

Designing and executing early childhood education and psychosocial program evaluations (30%)

• Design logic models and evaluation frameworks with input from internal stakeholders
• Research and select validated scales and assessments; set ambitious yet realistic targets to monitor program progress and achievements with a focus on outcomes for children
• Design analyses to determine if Save the Children’s programming is meeting the needs of children of color, children with disabilities, Spanish speaking children, and others who have been historically underserved.
• Collaborate on the design, development, and maintenance of data collection systems
• Develop other data collection instruments including surveys and protocols for qualitative interviews
• Submit research protocols to Save the Children’s Ethnics Review Board

Quantitative analysis (30%)

• Manage complex program data from relational databases using R or Stata
• Visualize data and create dashboards
• Conduct multivariate statistical analyses
• Interpret analyses for lay audiences
• Review team members; code and analyses for accuracy

Writing literature reviews and external publications (30%)

• Write literature reviews
• Write research papers for external publication
• Support others on the team to write research reports for external publication
• Collaborate with graphic design and communications teams

Management and Operations (10%)

• Develop systems and processes to ensure team is on track to meet deliverables
• Collaborate with senior staff at Save the Children to develop systems and processes
• Develop workplans in collaboration with other teams

 

Required Qualifications

• Minimum of a bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience
• At least 10 years of experience with the following:

• using R or Stata to analyze quantitative data
• managing complex data sets from relational databases
• publishing peer reviewed articles
• explaining advanced statistical concepts to lay audiences
• developing logic models
• evaluation study design and execution
• writing literature reviews
• publishing research summaries for lay audiences
• submitting institutional review board protocols

• At least 3 years of experience with the following:
• Conducting early childhood education research
• Conducting psychosocial research
• Developing dashboards in Tableau or PowerBi
• Professional proficiency in MS Office suite, advanced proficiency in Excel
• Professional proficiency in spoken and written English
• Demonstrated attention to detail and ability to work in a fast-paced environment with competing deadlines
• Demonstrated ability to communicate and collaborate effectively with individuals and teams at all levels, both internally and externally
• Demonstrated commitment to fostering and maintaining and environment of diversity, inclusion, and belonging

Preferred Qualifications

• D. in education or social sciences or other relevant field of study
• Qualitative research exper