Senior Research Associate – Market Intelligence

Landscape Alliance is a collaborative initiative involving the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF). These organizations conduct research on forestry and agroforestry to promote sustainable land use and environmental conservation.

This role involves coordinating market intelligence studies, managing day-to-day activities, maintaining work plans, and ensuring delivery against scope, quality, budgets, and timelines. The associate will also contribute to research design, survey review, and standardization, including developing and refining research tools and methods. Key aspects include survey programming, testing, data quality assurance, partner coordination, and continuous improvement of research systems and knowledge management.

1. Coordinate market intelligence studies, managing day-to-day activities across multiple projects to ensure timely delivery within scope and budget.
2. Maintain study work plans, trackers, milestones, and deliverable schedules, identifying and addressing implementation risks.
3. Coordinate research workflows, including questionnaire development, partner engagement, survey programming, piloting, field implementation, and data handover.
4. Liaise between internal research teams, country teams, procurement, and external research partners.
5. Support the preparation of implementation plans, budgets, Terms of Reference, and scopes of work.
6. Maintain organized study documentation, recording key decisions and communicating updates to team members.
7. Contribute to the design and implementation of quantitative, qualitative, and experimental market research studies, selecting appropriate tools.
8. Guide the development and implementation of various research approaches like surveys, interviews, focus groups, and concept testing.
9. Explore, test, and refine new research methods, including AI-assisted tools, digital methods, and video-based approaches.
10. Review and standardize questionnaire content, including wording, response categories, variable naming, and coding.
11. Check survey instruments for logic, consistency, respondent burden, and suitability for analysis, maintaining version control.
12. Contribute to the use and improvement of research protocols, SOPs, and quality-assurance procedures.
13. Test programmed surveys before deployment, documenting issues and making corrections.
14. Support user acceptance testing and piloting of digital survey tools, incorporating feedback.
15. Apply agreed survey-programming conventions and templates for consistency.
16. Support the preparation and use of routine field-monitoring and data-quality checks.
17. Review data-quality outputs during field implementation and flag emerging issues.
18. Troubleshoot routine survey-programming and data-quality issues, escalating significant problems.
19. Act as a day-to-day contact for implementing partners, clarifying study protocols and requirements.
20. Enable partner onboarding and coordination of questionnaire translation, piloting, training, and field follow-up.
21. Track fieldwork progress, review updates, and address issues with relevant staff.
22. Follow up with partners on agreed actions and deliverables, resolving operational issues.
23. Support review of partner outputs and documentation to confirm completion to required standards.
24. Maintain and improve reusable research tools, templates, SOPs, and training materials.
25. Document lessons learned and recurring issues, identifying practical improvements to research tools and workflows.
26. Contribute to the development and refinement of quality-control tools for research design, implementation, and data handover.
27. Explore and test new tools and methodologies to improve research quality, efficiency, or insight generation.
28. Support small-scale testing and refinement of promising approaches before wider application.

1. Master’s degree in economics, agricultural economics, development studies, marketing, market research, social sciences, statistics, data science, or a related discipline.
2. A bachelor’s degree in a relevant discipline combined with appropriate directly relevant research experience may also be considered.
3. At least five to seven years of relevant professional experience in applied research, market research, survey research, or a related field.
4. Demonstrated experience implementing quantitative, qualitative, or experimental research across different methodological approaches.
5. Practical experience developing research instruments and supporting field implementation using methods such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, or concept testing.
6. Practical experience in questionnaire development, digital survey programming, survey implementation, and research quality assurance.
7. Experience programming digital surveys using SurveyCTO, ODK, KoboToolbox, or comparable platforms.
8. Demonstrated willingness and ability to learn and apply new research tools, technologies, and methodologies.
9. Good understanding of survey logic, validation, variable construction, coding conventions, data dictionaries, and data structures for analysis.
10. Experience experimenting with digital, AI-assisted, or other emerging research methods is an advantage.
11. Experience working with external research agencies, consultants, field teams, or implementation partners, including supporting training and fieldwork follow-up.