Statement of Work

Impact Evaluation of the Labor-Intensive Works Project

Request for Proposal (RFP) and Terms of References (TOR) for Survey Companies

1. 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 Labor Intensive Works project funded by KfW and implemented by the Social Fund for Development (SFD).

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.

2. BACKGROUND ON THE INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), an international organization, conducts research to provide policy solutions that reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition throughout the developing world in an environmentally sustainable manner. Founded in 1975, IFPRI has worked for more than 40 years with policymakers, academics, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector, development practitioners, and others to undertake research, capacity strengthening, and policy communications activities. These activities are designed to address the broad range of economic development and poverty reduction issues that bear on IFPRI’s mission. The Institute is one of 15 organizations worldwide that make up the CGIAR. IFPRI was officially deemed a public international organization under Executive Order 12359.

IFPRI’s vision is a world free of hunger and malnutrition. This vision is based on the human right to adequate food and freedom from hunger and a recognition of the dignity inherent in all human beings. It is a vision of a world where every person has secure access to sufficient and safe food to sustain a healthy and productive life and where food-related decisions are made transparently and include the participation of consumers and producers. This flows from the CGIAR’s vision to reduce poverty and hunger, improve human health and nutrition, and enhance ecosystem resilience through high-quality international agricultural research, partnership, and leadership.

IFPRI’s mission is to provide research-based policy solutions that sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition. This mission flows from the system level objectives of the CGIAR, “To reduce levels of rural poverty, improve food security, improve health and nutrition, and sustainably manage natural resources in developing countries through scientific research and research-related activities in the fields of agriculture, livestock, forestry, fisheries, policy, and natural resources management.”

3. BACKGROUND ON LABOR INTENSIVE WORK (LIWP) PROJECT

The objectives of LIWP are to create temporary job opportunities to reduce the negative impacts of crises on food security and to use the job opportunities to invest in beneficial projects, through the construction of new infrastructure or improvements of existing infrastructure.The targeted outcomes are increased income and consumption smoothing, reduction in poverty, and infrastructure development.Due to the crisis situation and urgency of achieving high levels of coverage, LIWP focuses currently on short-term interventions of 4–6 months.This means that the infrastructure development is limited to projects that can be achieved within this time frame, such as Protection and rehabilitation of Agricultural lands and terraces, construction and rehabilitation of irrigation canals, improvement, and protection of rural roads, etc.

Targeting of communities occurs at different geographical levels sequentially.Governorate and district-level targeting is based on a distress index and the history of prior SFD involvement at the district level is taken into account.At the village level, there is a combination of desk targeting and field targeting.Desk targeting of villages based on basic service deprivation according to the census, prioritization of villages with at least 300 people in a single village or cluster, and priority to villages hosting IDPS.Field verification is also used in particular to ensure poverty village conditions seen in the area and ensure compliance with a policy that there must be fewer than 30% of farms growing qat.

Beneficiaries self-select, depend on reducing wages from 10-20% lower than the prevailing local wages. Participation is based on their well-being and capabilities.Households who wish to work are registered and receive an allocation of 40-50 workdays, depending on the number of participating households relative to project needs.

Women and people with special needs are specifically encouraged to participate by designing appropriate work tasks and schedules to accommodate their needs. Households are grouped into specific work types, with up to three workers from the same household, all involved in the same activity.During infrastructure construction, some participants receive on-the-job training for skills such as building, plumbing, plastering, blacksmithing, etc.

4. OBJECTIVE, QUESTIONNAIRES, AND SPECIFIC ACTIVITIES

4.1 Objective of the study

The proposed panel survey seeks to answer the following questions, among others:

• What are the impacts of LIWP on household and community welfare?

• Does the new livelihoods approach increase sustainability of impacts?

4.2 Sample Size and Location

The planned panel sample size is 3000 households in 20 communities in selected governorates in South of Yemen.

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

4.3 Questionnaires

The selected survey firm will work with IFPRI to finalize the design of the questionnaire in English and Arabic[1].The survey length will approximately be 1.5 hours long, with enumerators completing 3-4 questionnaires per day.

The main outcomes of the survey are presented below:

Outcomes:

· Employment, wages, and labor income

· Reduced coping strategies index and food consumption score

· Time use

· Revenues and costs from livestock if any

· Debts, loans, and savings

· Perception of employability and skills gained

· Subjective perception of wellbeing

· Social cohesion

· Vignettes designed to measure intrahousehold and community decision-making norms

· Benefits from community assets

4.4 Specific activities to be achieved by the tenderer

The baseline and the end line data collection are expected to occur in January 2025 and August 2025, respectively. 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.

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 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 KOBO, a computerized system for data entry that will enable remote real-time monitoring by IFPRI.

iv. Recruitment & Training & Main Data Collection

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

·Recruiting Field Researchers

Quantitative 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. At least one half of the interviewers should be women to allow for women to be interviewed in their houses.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.Interviewers may be recruited from the same district as study communities to avoid long travel and ensure acceptability of females moving without mahrams but must not be recruited from the same subdistrict as study communities.

·Training of Field Staff

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

Supervisor Training

Training sessions for supervisors will take place over 3 days in Cairo together with the research team, including 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. Travel costs for supervisors to Cairo should be included in the financial proposal.

Quality Controllers Mechanism

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 percent of the sample which will be shared with IFPRI to verify the acceptable level of confidence that interviews took place according to the study criteria.

Interviewers Training

To ensure that the interviewers have understood the issues under examination, they will also receive training sessions on data collection. The training should occur in person or using a live video feed, last at least 40 hours, and encompass a full review of the questionnaire with sufficient space with clarification of the purpose and meaning of each question, supervised practice with partners in going through the full questionnaire and using the CAPI, and assessment of interviewer readiness for fieldwork. Supervisors are required to participate in these training sessions.Training must be arranged so that either a local IFPRI consultant or IFPRI research staff in Cairo can attend remotely or in-person all the training.

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

The training will include in-house sessions and field practice. The in-house sessions will include practice with print questionnaires followed by special training on the data entry system: KOBO. Field practice will be conducted, after receiving security 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 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 training 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 is 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.

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.

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.

5. PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Type of Contract

Global price

Contracting Party

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Participation

· Tenders should be submitted by the same service provider or consortium which was invited and to which the letter of the invitation to tender is addressed. No change whatsoever in the identity or composition of the tenderer is permitted unless IFPRI has given its prior approval in writing;

· Invited service providers are not allowed to form alliances with any other firms or to sub-contract to each other for the purposes of this contract except where pre-approved by IFPRI. For this purpose individual experts recruited for the project implementation as expert or non-expert are not regarded as subcontractors;

· To be eligible for participation in this tender procedure, tenderers must prove to the satisfaction of IFPRI that they comply with the necessary legal, technical and financial requirements and have the means to carry out the contract effectively.

Selection Criteria

The survey firm selection will be based on IFPRI assessment of potential to deliver high quality data at a reasonable cost, as indicated by survey firm elaboration of their data quality procedures, experience, and references. The survey firm selection will also be based on its proven ability in obtaining the necessary approvals and permissions for conducting fieldwork and based on having a solid relationship with the Government of Yemen and the local authorities.

Commencement Date and Period of Implementation

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

Detailed Timeline and Estimated Activity Duration

Table 1: Activity, Start Dates and Durations

Dates are tentative pending finalization of evaluation design with program partners and security clearance receipt.

Reporting requirements

The selected survey firm shall be expected to provide the following reports:

Table 2: Reporting Requirements

Submission and approval of reports

· Reports, documents, and corresponding IT files referred to above must be submitted to IFPRI.

· Reports must be written in English.

· IFPRI is responsible for approving the reports.

· PowerPoint presentations or equivalent will not be considered as reports.

6. SUBMISSION OF TENDERS

Tenders must be submitted such that they are received in soft copy before the 17th of December 2024. They must include the requested documents and information