Employment Type: Permanent Staff (EHRA NF)

Vacancy ID: NF0008497

Salary Range: $65,000 - $75,000

Position Summary/Description:

The Add Health Parent Study ( AHPS ), housed at the Carolina Population Center ( CPC ), is an innovative intergenerational biosocial project funded by National Institutes of Health ( NIH ) for a second phase that will increase the diversity of the sample and add new cognitive and genetic data. A multiethnic/racial and interdisciplinary team of scientists will collect longitudinal cognitive, social, behavioral, and biological data on parents of individuals who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), which has been administered at CPC for 25+ years.

Phase 2 of the Add Health Parent Study will increase the number of Non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic parent participants in the AHPS . These new participants will be administered a one-hour survey that Phase 1 participants completed. The full AHPS sample (e.g., Phase 1 and 2) will then be administered an Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias (AD/ ADRD ) Assessment, and physical measures and DNA data collection. These data will be linked to an earlier wave of data collection on the parents to create longitudinal AHPS data and also linked to longitudinal data on their children in Add Health. Cognitive measures across the two generations and a multigenerational genomic database will be created, and these new data will be available to the scientific community of 50,000+ Add Health and AHPS users. This project will facilitate the study of racial/ethnic disparities in cognitive aging, caregiving, and various dementia risks across two generations with longitudinal, nationally representative data collected from adult children and their parents.

The programmer should have experience working with administrative, survey and biological data. In year 2, programmer will work under the supervision of the Data Manager to create and maintain a tracking system for DNA specimens (saliva and dried blood spots) collected in the field and sent to the UT Houston Lab and for coordinating and checking consents for DNA specimen collection. In year 2, they will begin data cleaning activities as survey field data begin to come in. Their effort increases substantially in years 3-5 when data flows intensify from both survey and biospecimen collection and they link and review data in real time, conduct deductive disclosure analysis of new and merged data files, and assist in preparing the final file and codebook for dissemination. They will also support the GRAs in years 4 and 5 in the cleaning and coding of FHH data and in preparation of measures for proposed aims 3a and 3b analyses.

The programmer will also monitor the incoming Assessment data from the field in real time, conduct data quality checks, and report on any data issues as they arise to both the AD/ ADRD Assessment Project Manager and RTI contractor team. In year 1, the programmer will set up algorithms for checking and cleaning data. In years 2-4, the programmer will clean data, code assessment variables, and harmonize assessment variables with those from Add Health Wave VI on the adult children. The programmer will prepare data tables for user guides on the AD/ ADRD Assessment and prepare files for dissemination, including those for the Intergenerational AHPS Add Health database that merges the longitudinal AHPS data with longitudinal Add Health data.

Education and Experience:

• Experience with SUGEN , R, Plink, Linux, Python, and Stata.

• Demonstrated experience managing and analyzing genomic and phenotypic data.

• Significant experience with Microsoft Excel.

• Skill with highly organized data storage and documentation techniques that promote transparent documentation, collaboration, access, and reproducibility.

• Ability to work both collaboratively and independently on data quality assessments, data cleaning, and basic analysis.

Essential Skills:

Must be able to demonstrate extensive experience with SAS .

AA/EEO Statement:

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, color, disability, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or status as a protected veteran.