Research Statistician

You must meet the Basic Requirements listed in the Education Requirements section and the Specialized Experience to qualify for Research Statistician, as described below.

Basic Requirement

Statistician, 1530: A) Degree: that included 15 semester hours in statistics (or in mathematics and statistics, provided at least 6 semester hours were in statistics), and 9 additional semester hours in one or more of the following: physical or biological sciences, medicine, education, or engineering; or in the social sciences including demography, history, economics, social welfare, geography, international relations, social or cultural anthropology, health sociology, political science, public administration, psychology, etc. Credit toward meeting statistical course requirements should be given for courses in which 50 percent of the course content appears to be statistical methods, e.g., courses that included studies in research methods in psychology or economics such as tests and measurements or business cycles, or courses in methods of processing mass statistical data such as tabulating methods or electronic data processing.

OR

B) Combination of education and experience -- courses as shown in A above, plus appropriate experience or additional education. The experience should have included a full range of professional statistical work such as (a) sampling, (b) collecting, computing, and analyzing statistical data, and (c) applying statistical techniques such as measurement of central tendency, dispersion, skewness, sampling error, simple and multiple correlation, analysis of variance, and tests of significance.

Specialized Experience

Specialized experience isthe experience that equipped the applicant with the particular knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA's) to perform the duties of the position successfully, and that is typically in or related to the position to be filled. To be creditable, specialized experience must have been equivalent to at least the next lower grade level.

GS-12: In addition to the basic requirements above, applicants must have 52 weeks of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade level, GS-11, in the Federal Service. This experience must have equipped the applicant with the particular knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully perform the duties of the position. Examples include the following:

• Conducting research, or participating as a team, that contributed to the cognitive or behavioral aspects of survey methodology. Areas of research include at least one or more of the following: cognitive interviewing or research, questionnaire development, data collection or interviewing procedures, user experience research, research informing on the sources or causes of survey nonresponse, or qualitative or quantitative data analysis to assess data quality or the result of laboratory experiments, such as categorical, univariate, and multivariate statistical analyses; AND
• Contributing to the reporting of findings from research projects that resulted in a published technical report or a peer-reviewed journal generally as a co-author or contributing author.

• Designing and conducting research independently, and/or leading a research team or project that addresses a key research question related to the cognitive or behavioral aspects of survey methodology. Areas of research include at least one or more of the following: cognitive interviewing or research, questionnaire development, data collection or interviewing procedures, user experience research, research informing on the sources or causes of survey nonresponse, or qualitative or quantitative data analysis to assess data quality or the result of laboratory experiments, such as categorical, univariate, and multivariate statistical analysis; AND
• Disseminating and reporting findings from complex research projects as a lead author in a published technical report, or submission as a lead author to a peer-reviewed journal.