Position Description: The Boston Housing Authority is seeking an intern for Summer 2024 to analyze data from its new data sharing agreement with Boston Public Schools (BPS) to assess the performance of BHA students compared to non-BHA students in BPS. The intern will present the findings to BHA departments to inform organization policies and procedures. The intern will also be responsible for developing a data use strategy to replicate the analysis over time and provide recommendations for how to use internal BHA data to inform our operations.
Short-/long-term Projects
By the conclusion of the internship, the Data Analysis and Strategy Specialist will have:
- Analyzed data provided by BPS for the 2022-2023 school year to understand how BHA youth are performing in school relative to the broader BPS student population. Analysis should include descriptive and, where possible, inferential statistics to understand the factors that correlate with school performance, such as school, neighborhood, demographics, and socioeconomics. The BHA anticipates that the findings from this analysis will inform its policies and assistance provided to youth living in BHA housing.
- Developed an analysis plan for how the BHA will use the data provided by BPS on an annual basis to monitor the school performance of youth living in BHA housing over time. The plan should outline the descriptive statistics to conduct as well as variables and statistical tests it should use for inferential statistics. The plan should include a crosswalk of dependent and independent variables to test based on the data available. The plan should also include scripts to run the data analysis in a standard statistical software like R, SPSS, or Python based on the scripts developed for the first iteration of the analysis for the 2022-2023 school year.
- Created a proposal for how the BHA can use the data and analysis findings to improve its policies and procedures. The proposal should outline how data points and findings connect to specific BHA policies and recommendations on how BHA can revise its policies to improve education outcomes for youth.
- Reviewed other resident data collected by the BHA and developed an analysis plan for the BHA to regularly implement to understand how the BHA can better support residents, to complement the BPS data analysis. The plan should include a crosswalk of dependent and independent variables to test based on the data available. The plan should also include scripts to run the data analysis in a standard statistical software like R, SPSS, or Python.
Job Functions
The Data Analysis and Strategy Specialist should be able to perform the following job functions:
- Proficiency in a standard statistical software like R, SPSS, or Python
- Data cleaning and match with BHA records
- Data analysis using both descriptive and inferential statistics
- Synthesize data analysis into key findings
- Analysis of housing policies and their intersections with education outcomes
- Develop policy recommendations based on data analysis findings
- Create data analysis plans that document data cleaning and analysis steps and outline key dependent and independent variables to analyze
- Draft concise and clear proposals outlining recommendations
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office and other comparable software
Day-to-day Responsibilities
On a day-to-day basis, the Data Analysis and Strategy Specialist will:
- Check and clean data provided by BPS to remove duplicate, inconsistent, and inaccurate data from the records prior to analysis;
- Conduct statistical analysis on the data provided by BPS using descriptive and inferential statistics;
- Produce data books with charts and tables of all analysis performed;
- Draft summary reports of key findings from the analysis to inform BHA employees;
- Present key data findings to BHA leadership to inform their policies and services;
- Synthesize data findings into policy recommendations for the BHA to operationalize in support of youth living at BHA housing;
- Create analysis plan outlining the steps for the BHA to analyze BPS data annually, including descriptive steps, inferential steps, crosswalk of dependent and independent variables to analyze, and pre-written scripts for chosen statistical software;
- Review additional data collected by the BHA and develop a plan to regularly analyze the data to inform BHA policies and procedures.