Associate Research Analyst

The Office of Early Childhood (OEC) is a unique state agency in Connecticut that helps families with young children achieve better life outcomes. A new state agency, OEC is called on in its enabling statute to be data-driven, human-centered, and result-focused. We touch the lives of over 200,000 young children, parents, and caregivers annually through our integrated focus on early care and education programs and safety supports, our home visiting programs, and other critical early childhood services.  By scale of funding, OEC is one of the largest departments of Connecticut state government, deploying and leveraging approximately half a billion dollars each year in service of vulnerable families and communities.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Connecticut is a leader in the nation.  Whereas early childhood programming in most states is fragmented across multiple programs which families must navigate, only a handful of states have created agencies dedicated to integrating the supports families with young children require – an only Connecticut’s has  clear data-driven mandate.  The majority of brain development occurs in early childhood, setting the stage for the rest of a lifetime.  Experiences that support or impair a child’s development during this time can have significant and long lasting impacts. New parents and caregivers need support to weather the challenges and costs of parenting and caring for young children.  OEC acts on the overwhelming evidence that intervention early in life, is the most promising way to break the cycle of poverty.   Your work here will have an impact on the economic security, health, safety, and resilience of families with young children. You will help make childcare safer, more accessible and of higher quality; you will provide families with the support they need to help prevent child abuse, neglect, and trauma; you will help families gain greater economic stability; you will support families with young children who have developmental delays.  This position will play a critical role in the development of this new agency, showing that a family-centered, data-smart approach to service delivery drives measurable better results for children. We are looking to significantly expand our ability to deliver digital services and analytics.  The person serving in this role will be part of a new team focused on bringing the best analytic talent to bear on pressing social issues.  As critical member of the analytic team, this position will be responsible for helping develop a new way of putting data analytics at the heart of policy making - helping the agency transform into a data-driven agency - making smart decisions about how to best support families and programs. Working closely with research, programmatic, fiscal, and technology staff, this person will help enable smarter policy development, streamlined program enrollment for families, modern performance tracking, predictive-analytics, and other user-centered digital services and systems. This is an exceptional opportunity for candidates who have analytic expertise that they want to use to make meaningful social change and help state government be more effective at serving families with young children.  This position is located at 450 Columbus Blvd., Hartford, CT.  This is a 40-hour a week role.  This position will require traveling to meetings in CT and attending overnight national meetings in other states 1-2 times per year.

Applicants are required to submit a resume detailing experience, education and training related to this position on the resume tab with their submission. 

Should you have questions pertaining to this recruitment, please contact Ellen Morris at ellen.l.morris@ct.gov or (860) 713-6690.

This position will be filled in accordance with reemployment, SEBAC, transfer, promotion and merit employment rules.

In a state agency, this class is accountable for performing the most complex tasks in the development and implementation of research projects.

Performs most complex duties in area of research design and implementation; develops and conducts formal research methodologies and procedures and analyzes and evaluates data; designs data collection forms and develops procedures; performs complex statistical analysis; prepares comprehensive narrative and statistical reports; may prepare special reports for agency officials in response to inquiries from legislature or the public; performs related duties as required.

Considerable knowledge of research methods and techniques; considerable knowledge of principles, concepts and methods of statistical analysis; knowledge of agency related policies and procedures as related to research; considerable oral and written communication skills; interpersonal skills; considerable ability to analyze data; ability to develop programs and use prepackaged computer programs to perform data analysis.

Seven (7) years of professional experience in research, data analysis or economics.

One (1) year of the General Experience must have been conducting research at the level of Research Analyst.

1. College training may be substituted for the General Experience on the basis of fifteen (15) semester hours equalling one-half (1/2) year of experience to a maximum of four (4) years for a Bachelor's degree.
2. A Master's degree in economics, statistics or a closely related field may be substituted for one (1) additional year of the General Experience.

Creative team player with a can-do attitude and a passion for supporting families with young children; strong communication skills, experience assessing programmatic impact on parent and child outcomes;  experience creating data visualizations, statistical analysis, translating findings into actionable intelligence for policy making and continuous improvement, monitoring for program compliance, manipulating large data sets, presenting findings to large groups, facilitating meetings, generating professional, technical and non-technical writing; a documented history of working well in teams including proactive, independent and collaborative problem solving and working well under tight timelines.  Considerable knowledge of research methods and techniques; considerable knowledge of principles, concepts and methods of statistical analysis; knowledge of agency related policies and procedures as related to research.

AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

The State of Connecticut is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and strongly encourages the applications of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities.