Project: Global TIES for Children/ECD in Emergency & Conflict

Title: Research Scientist, ECDEC

Division/Department: Steinhardt/IHDSC – Global TIES for Children

Reports to: Dr. Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Principal Investigator

Work Location: New York University, New York - with opportunities for travel                                     

* Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, our research center is working remotely until the University authorizes our safe return to the office. Preliminary telework may be available or an option. *

Work Schedule: Full-time (100%)

Salary (Pay Range): Commensurate with experience  

Benefits Eligible: Yes

Paid Time Off: Yes

Start/End Date: As early as July 1, 2020, for a 1-year contract
(Possibility of annual contract renewal contingent upon satisfactory performance and availability of funding)

Global TIES for Children - Early Childhood Development in Emergency & Conflict (ECDEC)

About ECDEC's Play to Learn and Ahlan Simsim Initiatives

The Rohingya and Syrian refugee crises are two of the defining humanitarian issues of our time, with millions displaced due to conflict and war. In addition, we know from decades of research that all children need nurturing care, a comforting routine, and opportunities to learn through play in the critical first years of life. Yet only about 3 percent of humanitarian assistance goes to education and only a tiny sliver of that 3 percent to early childhood development services. 
 

The Play to Learn initiative is a partnership between Sesame Workshop, BRAC, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and NYU Global TIES for Children to develop, provide and evaluate high-quality early childhood development services and mass media for young children in Rohingya refugee families in Cox's Bazar.  Ahlan Simsim is a partnership between Sesame Workshop, the IRC, and NYU Global TIES for Children to develop, provide and evaluate high-quality early childhood development services and mass media for young children in Syrian refugee families in the Middle East.  Research for these projects are implemented in three countries in the Middle East -- Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq – and in Cox's Bazar district, Bangladesh.  These partnerships are funded by a $100 million grant from the LEGO Foundation (Play to Learn) and the inaugural 100&Change award from the MacArthur Foundation (Ahlan Simsim). NYU Global TIES for Children is leading the external evaluations of the programming in these projects, including formative and implementation research, impact evaluations, and a large longitudinal prenatal-cohort study in Bangladesh. 
 

We partner with Sesame Workshop, BRAC and the IRC to bring the most rigorous qualitative and quantitative evidence to bear on how to best serve families and children in these communities.  We pay special attention to measurement of multiple domains of early childhood development, as well as observational measurement of the quality of implementation of programming in homes, centers, and communities.

The project team includes Hirokazu Yoshikawa (Principal Investigator), Alice J. Wuermli (Co-PI), Lizzie Goodfriend (Project Managing Director), J. Lawrence Aber (Co-Investigator), and research partners at BRAC, IRC and Sesame Workshop. 
 

Position Summary

The successful candidate will act as a member of the projects' leadership team, taking lead responsibility for the overall direction and implementation of at least one of the discrete studies and providing relevant technical and scientific input across the breadth of studies under the Play to Learn and Ahlan Simsim initiatives.  The project is specifically looking for candidates with expertise in Global Early Childhood Development, specifically direct assessments of early child development (ECD) and/or observational assessments of service / program quality. Areas of child measurement include play-based learning; social-emotional development; and early cognitive, language, numeracy, and executive function skills (across ages 0-6).  Areas of quality measurement include observational measures of adult-guided play and playfulness in settings that include groups of children with a facilitator or teacher; facilitated groups of parents / caregivers with their children; formal preschool classrooms; and home-based visits to support responsive caregiving, nurturing care and parent well-being. 
 

The successful candidate will report directly to the senior leadership of Play to Learn and Ahlan Simsim at NYU Global TIES, and will work in close collaboration with Sesame Workshop as well as the IRC, BRAC, and IPA teams on the ground. The successful candidate will be joining a team of 12 staff, and will have the opportunity to collaborate with a number of affiliated researchers at NYU as well as other research institutions.
 

This position requires travel to Bangladesh and/or the Middle East.

Position Responsibilities

The incumbent will perform the following activities:

• Liaising with relevant project staff at NYU, SW, IRC, and BRAC, provide overall direction for one or more studies, acting as the primary coordination focal point for the assigned study.
• Act as cross-cutting scientific advisor and support in candidate's area of technical expertise to other studies, as required.
• Participate in review and selection of appropriate measures.
• Liaise with relevant research counterparts on in-country data collection and research teams* to ensure final study designs and planning account for project needs and field realities.
• Train enumerators for reliable on-the-ground data collection by teams of in-country research staff. *
• Working closely with relevant internal and external counterparts, oversee data collection activities, data quality assurance, data cleaning, data analyses.
• Conduct literature reviews on topics relevant to the studies.
• Conduct psychometric and predictive analyses.
• Prepare Human Subjects Review / IRB applications and amendments.
• Ensure compliance with ethical requirements of each partner organization as well as NYU, and ensure client safety through close collaboration with on-the-ground research teams.
• Travel as needed to sites in the Middle East or Bangladesh.
• Prepare project reports, briefs and correspondence for internal and external dissemination.
• Prepare presentations for conferences and manuscripts for academic journal publication.

* In the Middle East our data collection partners are the IRC. In Bangladesh our data collection partner is Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA).  NYU Global TIES works with the data collection teams hired by the IRC and IPA in training and supervision of data collection waves.