Job Summary

Lab OverviewThe Prison Education Action Research Lab (PEARL) at the College of Education at the University of Utah is the nation's first center dedicated to advancing research, data, and leadership in postsecondary education in prison. Funded by an $8 million award from Ascendium Education Group, PEARL leverages evidence-based research to change systems and reduce barriers to postsecondary education for people directly impacted by the criminal legal system. PEARL's anchor project, the Prison Education Research Initiative (PERI), is a first-of-its-kind multi-institutional longitudinal study spanning 22+ partner colleges and universities nationwide.

Mission
PEARL does research that advances educational justice for people and communities impacted by incarceration.

Position SummaryThe Research Data Analyst will lead the secure acquisition, organization, documentation, preparation, integration, and analysis of complex multi-site administrative and research datasets for PEARL's national longitudinal study, with particular responsibility for multi-institution data management, relational database development, and related data infrastructure.

This position is ideal for a highly skilled quantitative data professional who thrives in a collaborative research environment and enjoys transforming raw data into accurate, well-documented, analysis-ready files and reproducible outputs.

Working closely with Principal Investigators, institutional partners, and research staff, the Research Data Analyst will oversee data workflows that include raw and inconsistently structured administrative corrections, education, employment, and survey data from multiple institutions, agencies, external organizations, and time periods. The successful candidate will build efficient, secure systems for data cleaning, merging, quality assurance, database development, reporting, and documentation while ensuring compliance with data security, IRB, and data-use agreement requirements. The Research Data Analyst will lead the development and ownership of data infrastructure and data products, including relational database management, pipeline development, and reporting tools that support partner-facing communication and research use.

The Research Data Analyst will work under the supervision of project PIs Dr. Erin L Castro and Dr. Jason Taylor at the University of Utah. We strongly encourage applications from individuals directly impacted by incarceration and punishment systems.

Department Specific Responsibilities

Support development of data collection, data management, and analysis plans.
Develop data collection instruments, tools, and templates for state and institutional administrative data and student and institutional surveys, adjusting tools and instruments for local and state contexts where relevant.
Support development of processes, protocols, and timelines for data collection and data validation.
Coordinate secure receipt of data files from partner institutions and agencies.
Maintain organized folder structures, file naming conventions, and version control practices.
Ensure data storage, access, and handling procedures comply with IRB approvals, University policy, and data-use agreements.
Design, build, document, own, and maintain the project relational database and related data infrastructure.
Develop and manage data pipelines for ingesting, transforming, and integrating multi-institution administrative and research data.
Clean, validate, standardize, recode, integrate, and document raw and inconsistently structured incoming datasets from multiple institutions and external organizations.
Create and maintain data dictionaries, codebooks, variable crosswalks, and workflow documentation.
Use Stata to conduct exploratory analyses, descriptive statistics, and statistical analyses.
Produce reproducible, report-ready tables, figures, descriptive summaries, and statistical outputs.
Create targeted dashboards, data visualizations, and reporting tools as supporting products for partner communication.
Lead scalable data infrastructure planning and implementation in collaboration with project leadership and technical partners.
Communicate data limitations, assumptions, anomalies, and recommendations clearly.
Help strengthen best practices in data governance, reproducibility, and research workflow management.
Support internal reporting, grant deliverables, manuscripts, conference presentations, and ad hoc analytic requests.

Minimum Qualifications

EQUIVALENCY STATEMENT: 1 year of higher education can be substituted for 1 year of directly related work experience (Example: bachelor's degree = 4 years of directly related work experience).

Department may hire employee at one of the following job levels:

Research Data Analyst III: Requires a bachelor's (or equivalency) + 6 years or a master's (or equivalency) + 4 years of directly related work experience.

Research Data Analyst II: Requires a bachelor's (or equivalency) + 4 years or a master's (or equivalency) + 2 years of directly related work experience.