Statistician

Grade: P-3

Organizational Setting

The Statistics Division (ESS) develops and advocates for the implementation of methodologies and standards for data collection, validation, processing and analysis, in the food and agriculture statistics domains. In these statistical domains, it also plays a key role in the compilation, processing and dissemination of internationally comparable data, and provides essential capacity building in support of member countries. The Division also disseminates publications, working papers and statistical yearbooks, that cover agriculture and food security statistics, including prices, investments, production, trade and agri-environmental statistical data. Finally, as the ESS Director also plays the role of FAO Chief Statistician, the Division supports the various functions of the Chief Statistician, that is to ensure stronger governance of FAO's data and statistical system, foster consistency of FAO's Data and Statistical programme within the Strategic Framework, ensure statistical excellence through the implementation of statistical standards and quality assurance mechanisms, and position FAO's presence in data and statistical discussions at global level.

The incumbent will work in the Food Security and Nutrition Statistics team within the Statistics Division and will contribute to the production and dissemination of all statistics reported in the Food Security and Nutrition, Food and Diet, and Cost and Affordability of Healthy Diets data domains of FAOSTAT.

The position is located in the Statistics Division (ESS) at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy.

Reporting Lines

The Statistician reports to the Senior Statistician and team leader of the Food Security and Nutrition Statistics Team, under the overall guidance of the Director of ESS.

Technical Focus

The Statistician will provide statistical expertise in the improvement of existing methods and development of new methods for the generation of food security and nutrition statistics, and in the compilation, processing, validation, analysis, storage and dissemination of data, microdata and metadata, with a special emphasis on data from experience-based food security scales. The role includes: ensuring the correct application of methods to estimate the Prevalence of food insecurity based on Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), the Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU), and the Prevalence of Unaffordability of a healthy diet (PUA); the production of high quality documents and statistical tools, including software packages, scripts, datasets and reports on the analysis of food security and nutrition data; collaborating with external stakeholders and partners, including national statistical offices and other international organizations or research institutions, involved in the collection, analysis, dissemination and reporting of food security and nutrition statistics based on FAO endorsed statistical methods and definitions.

Key Results

Research and analysis of information, data and statistics, statistical methods, statistical and econometric modelling. Development and maintenance of specialized tools, methodologies, systems and/or databases and the technical assistance services to support the implementation/delivery and monitoring of the programme of work and related products, projects, publications and services.

Key Functions

• Collects, reviews, processes and/or analyses key social/economic/environmental/indicators, based on both traditional statistical methods/sources or on unstructured sources and data science methods, to support the delivery of economic and social development programmes of work, which can be focused on products, projects, publications or services.

• Develops improved/updated technical, statistical and/or analytical tools, systems, databases.

• Conducts research, data collection, validation, analysis and/or reporting in support of the development of technical standards, international instruments, innovative tools and methodologies to be used within the Organization or by external stakeholders.

• Produces a variety of technical reports and provides input in technical documents, divisional publications and/or web pages.

• Provides response to requests and provides technical and/or policy advice, assistance and solutions to Regional, Subregional and Country Offices, including technical backstopping to field projects.

• Participates in multidisciplinary teams, collaborates with other Divisions/Offices/Centres on work groups and committees and promotes best practices.

• Provides capacity development services, including the planning and organization of training workshops and seminars and preparation of related information, materials, on-line tools and information kits.

• Participates in divisional teams, Organization-wide committees, project teams and working groups and provides specialized expertise on international technical networks and or technical policy and standard setting bodies.

• Supports the organization, conduct and follow-up of meetings, consultations and conferences, the development/production of required materials and the provision of information and assistance to partners.

• Participates in resource mobilization activities in accordance with the Strategic Framework and divisional plans.

• Promotes international cooperation and collaboration, advocates best practices, knowledge sharing, increased policy dialogue and provides technical expertise at international meetings and conferences.

Specific Functions

Maintains and refines the methodology and the statistical tools to compute the Prevalence of Food Insecurity based on FIES and other food security and nutrition indicators produced by the FSN statistics Team.

• Contributes to the development of analytic models and scoring strategies for the FIES, with the aim of ensuring cross-country comparability and stability over time of the food security measure.

• Analyses results to identify potential inconsistencies in the levels and trends of different indicators (FIES-based, PoU, PUA, economic and social well-being) and proposes appropriate strategies to address them.

• Maintains and extends the analytic codes and statistical methods to analyse FIES data through Item Response Theory models (both dichotomous and polytomous) as needed for various purposes (capacity building, research, SDG monitoring, IPC classification etc.).

• Reviews sampling frames of surveys used to inform food insecurity indicators, including post-stratification weighting, with the purpose of assessing the survey quality and re-adjusts the sampling weights if needed.

• Provides methodological guidance for the improvement of other food security and nutrition indicators produced by the team, including the PoU and PUA.

• Works on and refines the methodologies for data disaggregation and variance computation of the different food security and nutrition indicators.

Undertakes and supports data analysis and dissemination activities.

• Conducts analyses of national datasets collected in order to determine the potential for producing food insecurity prevalence estimates to inform the global assessment.

• Contributes to the publication of divisional reports and scientific papers on the FIES methodology and empirical application.

• Conducts research on extending existing methods to different applications (e.g. acute food insecurity monitoring, right to food, urban food security, etc.).

• Contributes to discussions among food security analysts in different fora, providing guidance for the analysis and interpretation of food security indicators.

• Disseminates and interprets results based on the analysis of FIES data in different platforms and systems (Statistical Working System -SWS, FAOSTAT, UNSD, etc.).

• Drafts sections of the State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report that concern statistical data analysis and interpretation of the food security indicators, updating and interpreting the latest trends and contributing in the thematic part as needed.

• Supports the computation of regional aggregates of various food security and nutrition indicators to be disseminated in FAOSTAT and other data platforms.

Provide technical assistance and capacity development on the FIES-based and other food security indicators.

• Within the mandate of the Food Security and Nutrition Statistics Team , provides assistance for statistical analyses related to food security indicators to other teams and divisions in FAO, to professionals from other international agencies, NGOs and academicians with an interest towards food security measurement, their interpretation and use in policy making.

• Provides technical assistance to national statistical offices for statistical analyses of food security data collected in national surveys.

• Designs, tests and conducts capacity development activities on the use of the developed FAO software and modelling approach to assess access to food (may require travel and language courses).

• Oversees the development of web-based learning materials for the software and model application to estimate the access to food, both for internal (FAO) and external (not FAO) users.

Provide statistical expertise/support to other members of the food security and nutrition statistics team as necessary.

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CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements

• Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in statistics, mathematics, economics, agricultural economics, or a related field.

• Five years of relevant experience in the compilation and analysis of food and agricultural statistics in national or international organizations with focus on the methodological development and production of food security statistics.

• Working knowledge (proficiency - level C) of English and intermediate knowledge (intermediate proficiency - level B) of another FAO official language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish).

Competencies

• Results Focus

• Teamwork

• Communication

• Building Effective Relationships

• Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

Technical/Functional Skills

• Work experience in more than one location or area of work, particularly in field positions.

• Strong command of statistical methods including: data presentation, analysis and descriptive statistics; main continuous and discrete random variables (binomial, normal, standard normal, log-normal) and their properties; probability distributions; conditional probability, probabilities of intersections of events, Bayes' theorem; correlation and rank correlation; sampling and sample size: simple, stratified, and multistage random sampling; Inference, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing and significance; linear regression (single and multiple) comparison of population means and variances, ANOVA; Chi-square and goodness of fit tests; nonlinear models: maximum likelihood estimation; elements of