Research Assistant (CYP Engagement Team)

Job Description

As the Research Assistant for the Children and Young People’s Engagement Team, you will provide vital support to a dynamic team working with children, young people and parents all over the UK. The Children and Young People’s Engagement Team undertakes a varied programme of work in supporting under 25s, parents and carers to get actively involved in the work of RCPCH, using youth work and social action approaches.

The Research Assistant role offers the opportunity to work closely with those in the field of child and youth engagement, youth volunteering and children’s rights. In this role you will start to gain knowledge of children’s rights and what matters to children and young people within child health by actively participating in the Children and Young People’s Engagement Team’s programme of activities, helping us achieve our aims. This position requires an ability to multi-task, to work at pace, to have an ability to provide information for mixed audiences and to help amplify what matters to children and young people in a robust and credible way.

Reporting to the Head of Children, Young People and Engagement, you will be responsible for providing qualitative and quantitative analysis of views, voices, experiences of children, young people and families in relation to child health topics.  You will determine and create audience appropriate ways to share this information to ensure their voices and views are well positioned to have an impact and influence decision makers and service planners. The role holder will support the wider engagement team in how to collect and collate data for review, and develop a system for managing out voice data.

You should have demonstrable relevant data analysis skills with experience of working with quantitative and qualitative data sets and be willing to work with children and young people created sources. Educated to degree level, you will have experience of using appropriate methodologies to describe or make inferences about data, with demonstrable experiences of working using your own initiative across a range of mixed methods sources to create high quality, accurate and reliable briefings/reports.

It would be beneficial for you to have an interest in children’s rights and an interest in improving child health outcomes.

Responsibilities

Working across the children and young people’s engagement team to:

1. Help support the Children and Young People’s Engagement Team to ensure that children and young people’s views are central to the work of RCPCH
2. Work with the Head of Children, Young People & Engagement and the Children & Young People’s Engagement Manager to ensure all engagement data collection activity by the team are appropriately rigorous, ethical and of value
3. Review engagement raw data to analyse, code and theme using thematic analysis, grounded theory or other relevant approaches
4. Perform literature searches and produce reviews of the literature to support the delivery of engagement projects
5. Critically review reports produced by peers, academics and other agencies to triangulate children and young people engagement data
6. Translate engagement data into language or formats others will understand, communicating insights and results by producing written reports, dashboards and presenting face-to-face
7. Respond to internal queries about children and young people’s engagement data / themes
8. Review Children and Young People’s Engagement Team data systems and provide recommendations to the Children and Young People’s Engagement Team and implement as requested
9. Establish and maintain robust data management, security and manipulation processes in line with data governance and protection requirements.
10. Provide statistical and analytical support to the Children and Young People’s Engagement Team as required
11. Contribute to key components of departmental and project reports including interpreting the data analysis and writing editorial content. 
12. Any other duties as required to support the College, the work of the Engagement Programme of work and CEO Division

Desirable skills

Desirable

• An understanding of governance systems and document control.
• Experience of working in direct delivery teams, supporting those who work with children and young people.

Skills Required

Essential

• Undergraduate degree or equivalent experience, in a social or medical science, statistics, or other research discipline
• Experience of producing and presenting high quality written reports, documentation and promotional information suitable for a range of audiences
• Experience of working with Nvivo and Microsoft Excel for cleaning, aggregating, coding, and merging data, and producing thematic and trend analysis
• Experience of analysing mixed datasets including carrying out literature reviews, and applying appropriate advanced methodologies that are ethical, robust and validated
• Experience of reviewing existing systems and structures, identifying improvements, creating and sharing recommendations, moving to established appropriate and proportionate systems
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills and experience, demonstrating the ability to understand and discuss complex issues around child health and health related statistics
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to quickly establish and maintain good working relationships with health professionals
• Ability to exercise discretion in dealing with confidential or sensitive matters, and be able to deliver difficult messages with diplomacy and tact
• Good attention to detail and high standards of accuracy.
• Strong IT skills, particularly in MS Excel, MS Word and MS PowerPoint

Educational Requirements

Essential 

• Undergraduate degree or equivalent experience, in a social or medical science, statistics, or other research discipline

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