Senior Researcher – Quantitative

The Law and Justice Foundation of NSW is an independent, not-for-profit organisation with a 50+year history of improving access to justice for the people of NSW. We inform policy development and service delivery by conducting high quality, research and analysis to identify legal and access to justice needs and what works to address these needs.

The Foundation works actively with all parts of the legal/access to justice sector across NSW (and nationally), and actively engages with policy makers, service providers, courts and tribunals, local authorities and services, and related non-legal services.

The Foundation’s research program involves innovative social research across a range of themes, including:

• Population level surveys of legal need, pathways and barriers to meet these needs, and vulnerabilities of different communities
• Identifying and using legal service and official (including Australian Bureau of Statistics) data to understand legal needs and how they can be met effectively.
• Exploring how legal services can most effectively collaborate with each other and connect with other human services to best reach priority clients
• Monitoring and evaluating services to assess how they can most cost-effectively meet the needs of disadvantaged clients in various geographic, socio-economic and service environments.

The Foundation now wishes to recruit a Senior Researcher (Quantitative) to join its well-respected team.

Working arrangements: Fixed term contract – two years with potential for extension. Full time or part time. Flexible working arrangements available.

Salary:  Dependent on qualifications and experience.

Responsible to:  Principal Researcher

Role

The exact nature of the role will vary depending on the seniority of the researcher and research projects underway but may include:

• leading and contributing to the design, conduct, management and reporting of evaluations and research studies in collaboration with other research staff
• leading the collection, processing and dissemination of complex administrative data provided by external organisations for research and statistical purposes (including data cleaning, documentation and analysis)
• undertaking complex descriptive and multivariate statistical analysis where appropriate
• participating in the internal review of research plans, papers and reports
• communicating research findings via oral presentations as required
• providing ad-hoc advice on evaluation design, research findings and data analysis to stakeholder organisations
• preparing costed project proposals in response to tenders, monitoring the progress of projects against resources and timelines, and maintaining client relationships
• working collaboratively with key staff across the organisation to ensure a common focus for the successful conduct and completion of the Foundation’s research projects
• supporting the Director and Principal Researchers in the development and delivery of the research program and with the management of a small team of researchers, providing supportive direction and on the job training as required
• working with Principal Researchers and HR to ensure staff research skills and capabilities are appropriately developed and maintained
• in conjunction with other staff at the Foundation, establishing and fostering relationships and networks across community, legal, academic and other areas of applied social research to ensure the success of the Foundation’s research program
• keeping up to date with issues and trends in the justice area and in research techniques, and exchange relevant information with other staff members

Skills/Selection Criteria

All Senior Researcher roles require post graduate qualifications in the social sciences, statistics or other relevant discipline and demonstrated experience in undertaking social research, evaluation and analysis in an academic, public-sector, not-for-profit or applied research organisation. Applicants for a Senior Researcher position should have at least 5 years relevant experience.

The Core Competencies required of Research staff (by level) can be found on the Foundation’s website under employment (www.lawfoundation.net.au).