[Jobs] Data Specialist Opening (fwd)

[Monique Verrier]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:25:05 -0500 (EST)
From: David A. Wise <dwise at nber.org>
To: aging at nber.org, hc at nber.org
Subject: Data Specialist Opening

Dear Members of the Aging and Health Care Programs:

We are currently seeking a person to work full-time at the NBER in
Cambridge on two large data infrastructure projects.  The overarching
goal is to reduce the entry costs (in terms of time
investment/learning curve) for using these particular data sets. The
full announcement is reproduced at the bottom of this message, and
I'd very much appreciate it if you could forward this message to any
suitable candidates you may know.

The first project will link together surveys on aging and health that
are being conducted around the world. The NBER is looking to create a
data repository and access system that makes it easy for researchers
to use these cross-national data and to compare health, labor force
behavior, and other family attributes across countries.

The second project will develop data extracts from the Medicare
claims data to facilitate use of the data by researchers. The
Medicare program provides health insurance to Americans over the age
of 65, and the NBER has the largest collection of Medicare claims
data on hospital, outpatient and ambulatory care. These are large
datasets and require considerable processing before they can be used
for analysis.

Thanks for your help.

David

David A. Wise
Director, Program on Aging
Area Director, Health and Retirement Programs
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Candidates may apply electronically by going to the NBER website
(www.nber.org), choosing About, Employment, Survey Data Specialist,
or by navigating directly to https://home.eease.com/recruit2/?id=468762&t=1.

Survey Data Specialist

The National Bureau of Economic Research is the nation's leading
non-profit economic research organization. For more than 75 years the
NBER has developed and disseminated impartial information on a wide
range of issues that are important for public and private decision
makers. The NBER coordinates research by more than 6000 economics
professors at leading universities and business schools throughout
the United States.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has an immediate
full-time opening in our Cambridge office for a qualified person to
organize large datasets in a way that will facilitate statistical
analysis of the data by economists. One of the data projects pertains
to surveys conducted in several countries. The other pertains to a
large Medicare claims database.

The first project will link together surveys on aging and health that
are being conducted around the world. The NBER is looking to create a
data repository and access system that makes it easy for researchers
to use these cross-national data and to compare health, labor force
behavior, and other family attributes across countries.

The second project will develop data extracts from the Medicare
claims data to facilitate use of the data by researchers. The
Medicare program provides health insurance to Americans over the age
of 65, and the NBER has the largest collection of Medicare claims
data on hospital, outpatient and ambulatory care. These are large
datasets and require considerable processing before they can be used
for analysis.

We are seeking a candidate who is able to organize these data in a
way that will facilitate their use for a variety of purposes, to
document the organized data, and to prepare software that facilitates
access to the data. The candidate will need to prepare demonstrations
of how the data files can be used. The candidate should be able to
work independently with minimum supervision.

Specific responsibilities will include:
1.    Obtaining and updating country data collected every two years
in the country surveys.
2.    Developing data files that combine the data for all of the
countries and preparing a detailed explanation of how the combined
data can be used. This would include, for example, a facility that
allows a researcher to view the exact question asked in each country
with respect to each query. It would also include organizing data
over time for each family from data collected for a large number of
families in many years.
3.    Creating analytical datasets from the Medicare claims data
files. This would include, for example, creating a sample of all
patients who have been treated for a heart-attack and following these
patients over time. Several validity checks would have to be conducted.
4.    Preparing explanations of data files that will be placed on the
NBER web pages.

Candidates for this position will have:

1. Bachelors Degree (required) or Masters (preferred) in Statistics,
Economics, or a similar quantitative field.
2. The candidate should have a strong analytical background and
should be detail oriented.
3. Knowledge of statistical software (STATA or SAS) is required and a
background in unix is helpful.
4. Knowledge of web development and regression analysis is also helpful.
5. The ability to communicate clearly and write documentation is key.
6. Experience working in a research environment and an ability to
anticipate the needs of academic researchers will be weighted.