Research Assistant and Data Manager at AAU/ College of Health Science

Position: Research Assistant and Data Manager

Under the investigators of the project, the research assistant and data manager coordinator will lead the training, quality assurance, and overall monitoring of all research and evaluation activities. S/he will work with the investigators to coordinate community engagement meetings and training of health professionals for the implementation of the research activities.

S/he will work to develop/refine data collection tools for the research, facilitate training of professionals, mobilization of communities, and provider-patient interactions. In addition, she/he will be responsible for organization of data and ensuring data quality throughout the project. She/he will train project staff on the use of the data capture system to be used in data collection, and will double enter data, conduct quality checks of the data, clean data, maintain the functionality of the study database, and will make data available to the US and Ethiopian Investigators in a format that is requested.

S/he will alert the study team to data issues that may arise during implementation and data collection. With possible differences in medical record keeping across the five research sites, she/he will liaise with the investigators to ensure that all appropriate variables are being collected and reported in a consistent manner. She/he will contribute to yearly reports and a final report at the end of the project.

Specific Roles and Responsibilities of Research Assistant/Data Manager

As a research assistant/data manager, she/he will be responsible for:

• Administering the assessments for the situation analysis by collecting, transcribing, translating, and completing preliminary analysis of high-quality data for the study;
• Will travel to the different sites and ensure that study eligibility criteria are met;
• Will obtain informed consent, compiling complete information with all requisite study forms, and responding to the needs of the study participants as appropriate;
• Conduct assessments that evaluate the implementation of the intervention through interviews and questionnaire administration with hospital providers and patients;
• Be responsible for gathering needed data for costing from each of the five research sites by administering assessments with the implementing providers and hospital administrators;
• Keeping accurate and detailed field notes and ensuring data quality
• Actively engaging with the health facility leadership, physicians, nurses, health extension workers, and the health development army;
• Managing data collected across all project teams;
• Refine the electronic data capture system using appropriate softwares;
• Work closely with the investigators to design solutions to resolve queiries in the data collection process;
• Report with regular data reviews and frequent quality control checks;
• Contribute to data analysis, interpretation of study findings, as well as writing reports.

Salary: Negotiable

Required Qualification

• MD and MPH
• Two years prior experience working with research projects with at least a year relevant to the post.

Required skills and competencies

• Fluency in written and spoken English
• Ability to work on analytic computer software
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills and ability to work in teams
• Experience of working in higher educational environment and in projects