About IPA:
Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) discovers and promotes effective solutions to global poverty problems. IPA designs, rigorously evaluates, and refines these solutions and their applications together with decision-makers to ensure that the evidence created is used to improve opportunities for the world’s poor. Since our founding in 2002, IPA has worked with over 350 leading academics to conduct over 450 evaluations in 51 countries. This research has informed hundreds of successful programs that now impact millions of individuals worldwide.
About Sports Betting Project:
Sports betting has exploded across sub-Saharan Africa. Uganda, where over 25 international companies are competing throughout the country with over 1,500 individual betting branches, is leading the charge. In Kampala, Uganda’s capital city, both the incidence of betting and the intensity of participation among bettors are extremely high. Early work has already shown that among 18-40 year-old men working in the informal sector more than 1 in 3 bets regularly. Among those who bet, this population had a median of 9% and a mean of nearly 13% of weekly income spent on betting. This project seeks to understand both the causes and consequences of such pervasive and high intensity participation in betting.
The Sports Betting project is a study of micro-entrepreneurs and their participation in sports betting. The current wave of this study will include 520 young men who participate in sports betting. Between March and June 2016, we will be creating a panel of these respondents, including five in-person interviews every two weeks with four phone check-ins conducted on the intermediate weeks. The project additionally includes a number of built-in experimental treatments to understand some of the behavioral and financial mechanisms contributing to sports betting demand.
Job Summary: The student volunteer will support the sport betting project in Kampala. The position will offer an opportunity to gain first-hand field and data management experience in an organization undertaking cutting-edge development research. The student volunteer will work closely with the Research Manager and Principal Investigator and assist in a variety of tasks: data management, data cleaning, team management, study design, and report writing.
Qualifications, Skills and Experience:
The student volunteer should hold a Bachelor’s degree in economics, social sciences, public policy, or related fields
Familiarity with Stata preferred
Previous exposure and experience with data management
Flexible, self-motivated, able to manage multiple tasks efficiently and a team player
Familiarity with randomized controlled trials is preferred
Previous experience living in a developing country is a plus
Fluency and excellent communication skills in English
How to Apply:
All suitably qualified and interested candidates should send an updated CV and a cover letter to sherskowitz@berkeley.edu.
In the email body: Put your full name, first (given) name followed by last (family) name.
Attachments: Please attach your resume and cover letter.
In the subject line: Copy exactly the following position line: IPA Uganda – Sports Betting – Student Volunteer Project