King's College London

About us

The Policy Institute at King’s College London works to solve society’s challenges with evidence and expertise. We combine the rigour of academia with the agility of a consultancy and the connectedness of a think tank.

Within the Policy Institute, the Evidence Development and Incubation Team (EDIT) is a specialist evaluation team, focusing on complex evaluations and producing high quality evidence of ‘what works’. We work with organisations, including governments, charities and others, to understand the impacts of their activities. This includes:

• Developing and refining interventions

• Developing logic models and theories of change

• Designing and implementing process evaluations to understand how interventions work in practice and how they are experienced by participants

• Designing and implementing impact evaluations to assess, experimentally or quasi-experimentally, the impact of an intervention on key outcomes

• Working with organisations to develop their internal evaluation strategies and the capacities and processes that facilitate embedded evaluation.

We also advocate for evidence-based interventions, and work closely with members of the What Works Network to develop the evaluation ecosystem.  See more at: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/research-analysis

About the role

As an essential member of the Policy Institute, the Research Assistant will support in the scoping, delivery and research coordination of ongoing and new projects. We have a lot of exciting projects at the moment which you will have the opportunity to get involved in. Current projects include evaluations of: financial education initiatives in primary schools; interventions to aimed at reducing homelessness; programmes that support young people into work; and interventions to reduce youth violence.

Our ideal candidate will have formal training in econometrics or quantitative data analysis in R, and experience or an interest in researching effective practices in a range of areas, including but not limited to education, youth work, youth violence reduction, or homelessness.

The Research Assistant will contribute to the smooth and successful running of a small, high-performing team conducting a range of complex evaluation projects, including:

• Manage a demanding workload, with tasks across multiple projects with competing deadlines.

• Coordinate and administer evaluation projects, including: maintaining project tracking documents; scheduling meetings, focus groups and interviews; developing recruitment and procedure materials; and preparing ethical clearance documentation.

• Undertake bespoke pieces of quantitative research, data transformation manipulation and analysis to support the team’s work.

• Engage with clients and attend client meetings in order to scope, plan and progress our programmes of work.

• Review and synthesise literature to develop literature reviews and briefings, and contribute to the production of engaging reports.

• Identify relevant opportunities and contribute to new business development.

This is a full time post (35 Hours per week), and you will be offered an a fixed term contract of three years

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. Training in generating robust evaluation and research outputs, with experience in quasi-experimental or experimental research designs 
2. Training in R statistical software, or in a similar programme (e.g. STATA) 
3. Experience working independently on a research project 
4. Excellent organisational skills 
5. Exceptional written and oral communication skills 
6. High level of accuracy and attention to detail 

Desirable criteria

1. Experience working with vulnerable groups (e.g., children and young people, people experiencing or at risk of homelessness) 
2. Experience with survey design and analysis 

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the next page after you click “Apply Now”. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further information

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.

We are not able to offer sponsorship for candidates who do not currently possess the right to work in the UK.

This post is subject to Disclosure and Barring Service.