Associate/Senior Associate, Behavioural Design & Impact
Reports to: Senior Program Manager, Behavioural Design & Impact

Overview of CSBC
The Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC), Ashoka University - India’s leading liberal arts University – is funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). The vision of CSBC is to establish an institution, based out of India that is globally reputed for thought leadership and excellence in impactful behaviour change interventions for low-income and marginalised populations. The Centre is focused on bringing new capabilities such as behavioural science, design thinking, advanced data analytics, and responsive feedback to governments, practitioners, and donors to help better design and optimise behaviour change interventions. We work closely with Central and State Governments as well as other stakeholders in the areas of nutrition, sanitation, financial inclusion, maternal and newborn care, data privacy, and agriculture.

Overview of Role

The Behavioural Design & Impact vertical at CSBC is responsible for:

• Establishing a Behavioural Insight Unit network in India, both at the Central and State Government levels.
• Providing Strategic Support and Technical Assistance to improve policy outcomes by generating behavioural solutions across sectors of health, nutrition, education, sanitation, financial inclusion, etc.
• Empirical consulting, for both the government and the private sector, in applying behavioural science.

The Associate/Senior Associate would be responsible for leading ‘empirical consulting’ projects, across sectors of health, nutrition, education, sanitation, financial inclusion, etc., to generate evidence on behavioural solutions for strengthening policy outcomes.

The role would provide an opportunity to interact with real-world policy challenges, through an empirical approach of designing solutions using behavioural science and testing their efficacy using rigorous research methods; working closely with senior academics, high-level bureaucrats and various other developmental partners.

Responsibilities

The Programme Associate would be responsible for the day-to-day execution of all steps of the behaviour change process, which would include:

Defining and Diagnosing:

• Conducting literature reviews to deepen understanding of the Behavioural Science evidence base for identified project areas.
• Lead formative research studies in the field – through a mix of qualitative and survey-based methodologies.
• Prepare documentation to capture learnings from secondary and primary research to highlight key behavioural and system barriers.

Designing Solutions:

• Planning and organising design workshops with key domain experts, policy stakeholders, and behavioural researchers.
• Working with designers, consultants, and creative agencies to develop intervention models.
• Developing protocols, instruments, and measures to prototype interventions to create high-fidelity intervention models

Designing and executing experimental design protocols for research projects:

• Drafting, piloting and programming measurement instruments and protocol documents for the lab, lab-in-the-field and field experiments.
• Planning and managing the recruitment of subjects for different studies based on the research requirements.
• Ensuring smooth delivery of the data collection and intervention deployment processes in line with protocols.
• Coordinating with enumerators and subjects.
• Conducting regular quality control checks and compliance with data management protocols.
• Preparing codebooks and other project documentation for external circulation.
• Supporting dissemination efforts of the findings through the preparation of reports.

The Associate would also be responsible for:

• Ensuring timely delivery of high-quality project outputs as per project requirements.
• Supporting the contracting and financial tracking of projects.
• Ensuring strong knowledge management processes of projects.
• Provide organisational support:
• Bringing innovation and creativity to project approach and processes.
• Ideating and innovating on the application of behavioural insights for addressing policy challenges and for contributing to larger behavioural literature.
• Supporting other organisational growth and needs as required.
   

Skills Required

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in economics, social sciences, public policy, sociology or related fields.
• A minimum of 1-2 years of work experience in an analytical, consulting or policy role.
• Experience with conducting primary research in peri-urban/rural India.Strong understanding of the Indian
• policy landscape and experience of working with government officials.
• Familiarity with the design and implementation of lab, lab-in-the-field and field experiments.
• Ability to manage and respond to varied tasks quickly and efficiently.
• Strong interpersonal and communications skills – to be able to develop strong project documents and briefs.
• Strong critical and analytical thinking skills.
• Quick to learn, motivated to self-teach and capable of independently translating new knowledge into practice.
• Ability to give and receive constructive feedback.
• Willingness to travel and stay for an elongated period in field settings (based on existing circumstances).
• Fluency in English and Hindi (Required).

Preferred skills:

• Experience with statistical analysis software (such as R or Stata).
• Familiarity with randomized controlled trials/clinical trials/quasi-experiments.

Venue and Days of Work 

This role is based in India. Hence, the candidate should have work authorisation in India (preferably Indian citizenship or Overseas Citizenship of India). However, due to the COVID-19 situation, CSBC has switched to a work-from-home model of operations. Given these circumstances, the role would be on-boarded and executed remotely. The person would need to have their own laptop and access to a functioning internet connection. They would need to be available through regular working calls to virtually join team discussions and to support project requests. The candidate could be asked to relocate to Delhi and be expected to work from the NITI Aayog office 2-3 times a week.

Send your application to csbc@ashoka.edu.in

Please mention the position title (Associate, Behavioural Design & Impact/AV) in the subject line of the email.
Please include your resume and a cover letter highlighting your experience.