Research and Advisory Intern at Busara

What does the Busara Center do?

Busara implements research for organizations around the world, ranging from qualitative in-depth studies to lab experiments to large-scale randomized control trials. In addition, Busara’s advisory arm works with governments, non-profit organizations and private sector enterprises on improving their policies and products: Through incorporating insights from behavioral economics, we help organizations understand decision-making and enable them and the people they serve to make better and more informed choices.

Examples of Busara’s past and ongoing work include:

-Understanding social norms around gender, particular with respect to early marriage, early pregnancy, education and labor participation in order to design more targeted behavioral interventions

-Designing evidence-based and cost-effective interventions to increase HPV vaccination uptake 

-Understanding intra-household dynamics in the context of financial decision making

-Understanding bystander behaviors in cases of gender violence on college campuses and designing interventions to increase bystander action

-Embedding a behavioral science approach to understand and solve for problems relating to ownership and over consumption of common resources in rural settings 

-Designing and testing interventions seeking to increase uptake of Iron  pills for pregnant and lactating women in rural Haryana to help combat anemia 

-Understanding data privacy from a behavioral lens

About the Internship

As an intern for Busara team you will get the chance to dive headfirst into the world of behavioral science and get firsthand experience working on projects in the development space alongside your mentors. This is not your coffee-grabbing internship! Interns are tasked with supporting the research, composing reports, client deliverables, and analysis on ongoing projects, in close coordination with Analysts, Associates and Engagement Directors, thus exposing them to all sides of research.

This is a full time internship for 10-12 weeks.

Key Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Support in design and development of research and advisory projects focused on using behavioral science to alleviate global poverty
• Implement qualitative and quantitative behavioral research
• Develop and pilot instruments
• Support in management of large scale field and lab projects with leading academics and institutions
• Organize, clean, and analyze data
• Support in dissemination of results, prepare project reports, and present results
• Engage in internal projects, if needed

Minimum Requirements

• Students in their final semester or recent graduates who have completed their Bachelor’s or Master’s degree within the last 6 months
• Knowledge of experimental testing methodology
• Experience with basic inferential statistical analyses.
• Proficiency programming using R or STATA
• Busara loves diversity of thought and we will accept applicants from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds– Psychology, Sociology, Economics, Public Policy, Political Science, Statistics, Marketing and so on.
• High level of self-motivation and energy, an optimistic “can-do” attitude
• Interest in learning about qualitative research and data analysis
• Flexible, self-motivated, able to manage multiple tasks efficiently, and a team player.
• Interest and experience working in a fast-paced working environment.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team. 
• Interest in behavioral science.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience programming in Python.
• Experience using oTree or zTree.