The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) is looking for an exceptional candidate to join our Skills and Research and Evaluation teams as a Research Assistant. This role will be dedicated to supporting a randomised controlled trial (RCT) in further education colleges in the UK. The study aims to replicate and expand our work on interventions that provide social support to students resitting their GCSEs.

The then Prime Minister created BIT in 2010 to apply behavioural science to public policy in the UK. In February 2014 we became a social purpose company, owned by the Cabinet Office, Nesta (an innovation charity) and our employees.

The Behavioural Insights Team works with governments around the world in almost every area of policy. Whilst the subject and output of our projects varies considerably, there are common threads: we try to understand the contexts in which people make decisions; we notice small details; we find out what has and hasn’t worked before; we come up with innovative ideas for solving policy problems and we measure everything we do as robustly as we can. As well as displaying professional excellence, BIT selects staff on the basis of our company values: always prioritising social impact; empiricism and humility; fresh thinking, collaboration; and public service.

This role will involve working closely with Bibi Groot, an Advisor in BIT’s Skills team and doctoral student at University College London, and Dr Michael Sanders, Chief Scientist at BIT.

You will need to be willing to get involved in a range of tasks, be flexible in your approach and be able to juggle competing priorities. This role offers someone an excellent opportunity to develop their research and project management skills and to gain experience of running a large-scale research project. The role will involve:

• Helping with the recruitment and management of colleges involved in an RCT;
• Liaising with colleges about the trial and the delivery of the intervention;
• Working with Komms, BIT’s new text messaging platform, to deliver the programme to thousands of students;
• Undertaking relevant administrative tasks, e.g. workshop set-up, travel expenses etc;
• Supporting preparation for client meetings and presentations (e.g. researching information, formatting data etc);
• Maintaining and updating project plans and documentation and keeping the funder and independent evaluators informed;
• Helping to monitor and chase project work externally and internally, including liaising with colleges; and
• Providing updates to the project team and to the evaluators on the delivery of messages and any interim outcome measures.

• Strong communication and interpersonal skills - you must be able to communicate appropriately to staff at all levels;
• Strong IT skills (Google, MS Office);
• A can do attitude and a willingness to be flexible;
• Self-motivated and proactive;
• Good organisational skills; and
• Attention to detail.