Consultancy for Survey Implementer to Conduct Household Survey in India

The Organization

The Allianceof Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) delivers research-based solutions that harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people’s lives. Alliance solutions address the global crises of malnutrition, climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation.

With novel partnerships, the Alliance generates evidence and mainstreams innovations to transform food systems and landscapes so that they sustain the planet, drive prosperity, and nourish people.

The Alliance is part of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future.

About the position

This quantitative research study is intended to provide a baseline for the CGIAR Initiative “Nature-Positive Solutions for Shifting Agrifood Systems to More Resilient and Sustainable Pathways.” As such the implementer will conduct a household survey to understand current economic status, agricultural practices including nature-positive solutions, labor practices, food consumption, and dietary diversity, as well as gender differences in these areas. Related community-level surveys will also be conducted. The main research questions for the study are:

1. What is the true cost of food production systems, considering externalities related to human/health, social, and ecological/environmental costs and benefits?
2. What policy and investment recommendations can be made to promote nature positive solutions (NPS) for more equitable and sustainable agri-food production systems?
3. What are the short-term impacts of NPS on human, health, social, and ecological/environmental dimensions?

The selected firm will be responsible for coordinating and conducting a face-to-face quantitative survey among farming households in the state of Maharashtra in India (Akole block of Ahmednagar district and Shahada block of Nandurbar district in Maharashtra). The quantitative survey will consist of in-person interviews with men and women farmers (lasting 120–150 minutes), conducted via computer -assisted personal interviewing (CAPI), with about 1,500 households. The Alliance and IFPRI, who will supervise the technical work, will be solely responsible for the design on the quantitative survey instrument and selection of exact study locations. The work is to be implemented in synergy with the Nature+ India country coordination team.

Key responsibilities

1. Translate survey instrument and interview guide into local languages (as needed);
2. Obtain ethics clearance, research permits, and/or other local approvals;
3. Obtain enough tablets for CAPI data collection;
4. Develop, test, and finalize the CAPI data entry program that will be used to conduct the interviews in the field;
5. With assistance from the IFPRI, prepare the field implementation manual prior to enumerator training. The field manual will be the basis for quality assurance of the data collection process;
6. Organize the selection, hiring, and payment of enumerators to conduct the required data collection work. This will include hiring both male and female interviewers with the necessary language skills to ensure respondents for the individual interviews are matched on sex;
7. Facilitate and ensure the smooth operation of the enumerator training and survey pretest in collaboration with IFPRI staff. IFPRI and the s elected firm will jointly consider the COVID-19 implications of whether IFPRI staff conducting the training will do so in-person or virtually. It is expected that there will be a 5-day training, followed by a 2-day pretest and debrief, for the quantitative survey;
8. Develop and implement a field schedule for the quantitative data collection team s and community surveys, and provide regular status updates during fieldwork;
9. Develop spot- and back-check protocols and share these with IFPRI for feedback prior to the start of data collection;
10. Participate in weekly meetings with IFPRI throughout data collection;
11. Share the data generated from the spot and back-checks and additional data collection concerns with IFPRI in a timely manner so that issues can be promptly resolved;
12. Share the data generated from CAPI (in Stata format) with IFPRI during data collection, as and when the data is uploaded to the servers. These data will not be the cleaned data sets (except for variable and value labels, checking and correcting skip patterns, formatting the data in long format as required) , but the raw data sets as sent to the firm from their survey teams;
13. Conduct data cleaning to ensure consistency and range-checks; share the error check do-files with IFPRI;
14. Provide responses to queries from IFPRI in relation to data cleaning (as needed);
15. Deliver cleaned data sets (in Stata format) from the 1,500 household s in long format. The dataset should include translation of any open-ended questions from local languages to English if necessary;
16. Provide a brief report covering quantitative survey fieldwork, as well as any issues related to data management and cleaning.

Required qualification and experience

• Demonstrated experience conducting quantitative survey fieldwork in India within the past 5 years;
• Demonstrated experience conducting survey-related trainings;
• Expert knowledge of local context and languages in the target areas;
• Experience in building trust and good relations with village leaders, interviewees, and communities;
• Strong program management skills;
• Demonstrated experience in successfully coordinating large field teams and managing deliverables;
• Excellent computer skills and experience using CAPI and statistical software packages;
• Demonstrated experience with obtaining appropriate local ethics review and permits.

Terms of contract

3 months starting from mid-October, 2022