Statement of Work

Survey Firm to Support the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Impact Evaluation of the Yemen Food Security Response and Resilience Project

SUMMARY

In this Call for Tenders, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) invites survey firms to submit their offers to support IFPRI’s impact evaluation study for the Yemen Food Security and Resilience project funded by the World Bank and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The general objective would be to collaborate on all aspects of data collection including preparation for the survey, survey data collection, and data cleaning. The call for proposals required survey firms to submit a full proposal offer to fulfil the required tasks.

The services required by IFPRI are described in this Terms of Reference.

BACKGROUND ON THE YEMEN FOOD SECURITY RESPONSE AND RESILIENCE PROJECT

The program for which IFPRI plans on conducting an impact evaluation study, and for which tenderers should submit their offers is the Yemen Food Security Response and Resilience Project.

The Food Security Response and Resilience Project’s main objective is to improve the availability of and access to food and nutritious diets, both in the short and medium term, for targeted households in the Project Area, and to enhance Yemen’s capacity to respond to food insecurity.

IFPRI aims to analyze the effects of the value chain interventions in component 2 of the Food Security Response and Resilience Survey on agricultural production, food security, and resilience capacity of beneficiaries. Below we outline the main research objectives and research design for evaluating these interventions.

This Component will be implemented by FAO. The Component will support smallholder farmers and producers to invest in productive assets and help improve their capacity to better commercialize their products and enter new markets. The Component will support: (1) restoring climate-smart local food production to increase household access to food and food availability in local markets, and (2) improving farmer’s access to markets for staple and high value cash crops (such as horticultural crops and coffee), by strengthening value chains’ vertical and horizontal linkages, to increase incomes for beneficiary households. Component 2 will collaborate with IFC in developing selected high value agricultural value chains, building value chains between the project-supported farmers/agricultural producers and investment clients, with the assistance of IFC’s Advisory services. This component is therefore expected to restore climate-smart agricultural production while also stimulating the local economy and promoting the production of nutrient-dense foods (e.g., horticulture, pulses, meat (chicken and livestock), dairy and fish).

IFPRI aims to also measure trends in household resilience of FSRRP across all components using panel phone surveys.

1. OBJECTIVES AND OVERALL APPROACH

1.1 Objective of the Study

The proposed panel household and telephone surveys seek to answer the following questions, among others:

• How successful are input packages, training, and support offered in this component at increasing agricultural production?

• Which interventions or value chains are more resilient to the impact of conflict-related, and weather and pest related shocks?

· How severe and lasting are the impacts of exposure to shocks on household food security in Yemen?

· To what extent does household resilience to shocks improve over the period of the FSRRP implementation? And how do different components of FSRRP contribute to specific dimensions of resilience?

1.2 Sample Size and Location

The projected panel sample size of the household survey is 1400 households in 54 communities in selected governorates in South of Yemen only under the internationally recognized government. The projected panel sample size of the telephone survey is 1,050 households to be surveyed on a bi-monthly basis over 24 months (5 follow up rounds), including 700 households under the FAO component (value chain interventions), 100 households under the UNDP component (cash for work), and 250 households under the promoting nutrition component. The total estimated number of phone calls in the 5 rounds is 5,250.

If the sample size changes substantially from the sample listed here, the budget may be amended with the agreement of the IFPRI and the survey firm.

1.3 Questionnaires

The household survey length is approximately 1.5- 2 hours long and the telephone survey duration is approximately 15-20 minutes to make it feasible to collect by mobile phone. Survey participants will receive an air-time transfer for each round to encourage them to continue in the study. The air-time transfers are expected to be covered by the contracted survey firm.

Key outcomes will be collected in all rounds, while other household characteristics will be collected in selected rounds. Depending on the survey length constraint, each of the last four topics may be collected only in two rounds, once in the first year and once in the second year of the panel survey, because these pillars are not expected to vary as frequently as household consumption and shock indicators.

The main outcomes of the survey are presented below:

Household Survey Outcomes:

· Producer adoption of technology from training project indicator

· Food production and processing

o Volume of output project indicator

o Sale price

o Value of output

o Net profits (Revenue – costs)

· Household food consumption indicators:

o Food insecurity (measured using FIES) project indicator

o Food consumption score project indicator

o Dietary diversity for women and children project indicator

· Women’s empowerment in agriculture index

· Food prices and availability at community level

·Resilience capacity index

Other characteristics collected for analysis:

· Household composition and education levels

· Access to basic services

· Experience of shocks

· Program experience (attendance at training sessions, assets transferred)

o Satisfaction with various program elements

o Perceptions of largest challenges for agriculture/ agribusiness production

o Open-ended question (in small subset of 50 beneficiary households only) about how they benefited from the program benefited

Open-ended question (in small subset of 50 beneficiary households only) about most significant challenges faced

Telephone Survey Outcomes:

o Household food security (FIES)- all rounds project indicator

o Household dietary diversity – all rounds project indicator

o Shocks experienced – all rounds

o Food expenditure – all rounds

o Household demographic information (selected rounds only)

o Household education (selected rounds only)

o Access to basic services (selected rounds only)

oIncome sources (selected rounds only)

Note that these modules are subject to edits, additions, and deletions.

2. Specific Tasks

The selected survey firm will be tasked with the following activities:

i. Approvals

The selected survey firm will be responsible for obtaining all necessary fieldwork approvals and permissions for conducting in-person surveys, if any is necessary.

ii. Training Manuals & Other Documents

In addition to the questionnaires, the selected survey firm will be expected to deliver copies of all training materials used, including:

· Interviewer manual

· Supervisor manual

Other documents as developed to manage the samples may include interviewer assignment sheets and fieldwork achievement sheets.

Obtaining respondents’ consent forms is also required. The selected survey firm should work to ensure that this achieved in a reliable and ethical manner.

iii. Data Entry System

The survey firm is expected to use a computerized system for data entry that will enable remote real-time monitoring by IFPRI.

iv. Pilot Test

The selected survey firm would be expected to implement a pilot test, designed in consultation with IFPRI. The pilot will be conducted to provide a final check on the questionnaires’ design and data entry system, as well as length of the interview.

The selected survey firm will recruit teams, from amongst their best personnel, to participate in an associated pilot test data collection training, utilizing both print and tablet questionnaires. Recruits must have previously worked with the tenderer. The training should also be delivered to Supervisors, Interviewers, and Quality Controllers.

The pilot will take place in a few areas not covered in the sample of the main data collection. Locations will be divided amongst the teams recruited for the pilot.

v. Recruitment & Training & Main Data Collection

The main data collection involves several activities that are described in some details below:

· Recruiting Field Researchers

Quantitative interviewers, qualitative interviewers, Supervisors and Quality Controllers will be recruited by the selected survey firm to participate in the training. All recruits selected for the survey should have previous experience, and all must be university graduates. Selection will be from amongst those who have previously worked closely with the tenderer in similar surveys. Knowledge and experience with the research topic and methodology, performance during in-house training, and field practice will all be considered for selection. Staff selection must also consider the interviewer’s familiarity and fluency in the local dialect of the expected respondents.

· Training of Field Staff

Different in-person training sessions will be conducted by the selected survey firm for the main data collection:

Supervisor Training

Training sessions for supervisors will take place, going over the main modules of the survey questionnaires to ensure that they understand the content of the survey. The training will also focus specifically on a supervisor’s main responsibilities including how to enter a community, how to check the sample in the field, how to deal with non-response cases, how to organize a team’s work, how to use the tablet program, how to review the completed questionnaires before transferring to the designated Dropbox, how to solve duplicates if they occur, how to fill the fieldwork achievement sheet, and how to problem-solve, etc.

Quality Controllers Training

The survey firm is expected to propose an appropriate and well tested quality control mechanism. One of the main quality control mechanisms is to have a random back-checks component for 10-20 percent of the sample. Recording the surveys’ GPS coordinates also ensures that the enumerators are in the right villages.

Interviewers Training

To ensure that the interviewers have understood the issues under examination, they will also receive training sessionson data collection. Supervisors will additionally be required to participate in these training sessions.

Interviewers will receive training on basic interview techniques and specific survey topics (e.g. measurements of indicators, KTP, CAPI, etc.) as well as:

· Entry into a community and acting as a team

· Obtaining consent forms

· How to ask survey questions

· How to fill out the questionnaire, using visual aids

· Reporting training (including the interviewers’ assignment sheet, reporting issues, etc.).

· How to problem-solve

· Role playing

· Mock interviews

· Field practice in areas not covered in the survey sample

· Others

Interviewers will also receive training on the following for the telephone survey:

· Starting the phone calls

· Obtaining consent forms

· How to ask survey questions

· How to fill out the questionnaire

· Reporting training (including the interviewers’ assignment sheet, reporting issues, etc.).

· How to problem-solve

· Role playing

· Mock interviews

·Others

The training will include in-house sessions and field practice/mock phone surveys. The in-house sessions will include practice with print questionnaires followed by special training on the data entry system. Field practice will be conducted, after receiving any necessary approvals, in areas not covered in the main data collection sample.

The selected survey firm’s trainers will observe the interviewers while they conduct interviews to give them feedback on their performance and respond to their questions. Each interviewer will be evaluated during field practice by different trainers. Interviewers who do not perform well in the field practice or the mock interviews will be excluded from the remainder of the training and main data collection.

At the end of the training sessions, interviewers are ranked based on an overall evaluation of their performance. The best performing interviewers will be selected to participate in the main data collection. Ranking results will also be considered in team creation to ensure a balance of interviewer levels.

The trainings will be scheduled in consultation with IFPRI, to allow their staff/consultants to attend and respond to questions as necessary. This is particularly important for sessions concerning the content of the survey modules.

Main Data Collection

Once the training sessions are completed, teams will be composed as appropriate to the sample. Any issues or questions that arise during the data collection should be communicated to the IFPRI contact person and documented in the data collection report.

During the period of main data collection, in order to facilitate real-time monitoring by IFPRI, the survey firm will upload data as it is shared from the field to a shared Dropbox readable by the IFPRI research team.

For quality assurance within the methodology of using tablets, the selected survey firm will ensure:

· Effective supervision of the interviewing teams during fieldwork.

· Field visits and checks on a regular basis, at all stages, by the fieldwork coordinator and the associated staff team.

· Close communication maintained between the office and fieldwork teams, throughout fieldwork.

· An agreed system of quality control checks conducted by the quality controllers

· Print a certain percentage of questionnaires to be used if the tablet fails or proves problematic during the interview. In this case the interviewer has to continue the interview on paper and can enter the data on the tablet, later on the same day, after solving the problem.

·Other suggestions for quality control are welcome.

vi. Data Processing and Cleaning

Data cleaning procedures should be agreed with IFPRI and fully documented. The selected survey firm will be expected to submit the raw data (as originally entered at the time of the interview), a cleaned and labeled dataset, and full documentation (including do files) of how the raw data was processed. This will ensure the cleanliness, completeness, and consistency of the data collection, coding, and entry, as well as to facilitate further tabulations and analysis.

The tenderer is requested to fully elaborate on the data cleaning process they will follow.

vii. Follow-up and Responsiveness

Within 1 month after the fieldwork completion and data delivery, the selected survey firm will be available on a continuous basis to discuss with IFPRI initial findings from the data analysis, and will consult with the fieldwork staff to check if any surprising findings match their qualitative impressions from the field.

3. Timeframe

3.1 Commencement Date and Period of Implementation

The survey firm selected will work with IFPRI to ensure the study progresses well and on time.

3.2 Detailed Timeline and Estimated Activity Duration

Table 1: Activity, Start Dates and Durations- Household Survey

Dates are tentative pending finalization of evaluation design with program partners

Table 2: Activity, Start Dates and Durations- Telephone Survey

Dates are tentative pending finalization of evaluation design with program partners