Terms of Reference Endline Evaluation of Radio Serial Dramas (RSDs)

Terms of Reference

Endline Evaluation of Radio Serial Dramas (RSDs)

Kwishilya and Sinalamba   

PMC-Zambia USAID Community Radio Program

Introduction

PMC, a nonprofit organization based in South Burlington, Vermont, USA has been implementing a three-year funded USAID project in Zambia that includes the production of one Bemba-language (Kwishilya) and one Lozi-language (Sinalamba) RSDs. Each 156-episode RSD is broadcast on strategically selected community and commercial radio stations in Muchinga, Luapula, Northern and Central provinces for the Bemba drama, and Western province for the Lozi drama. The primary target audiences are women and adolescents ages 15-49. The secondary audience includes men ages 15-59 (See Appendix A). The RSDs address the following thematic issue areas:

Core Issue Areas

• Family Planning: tied to reproductive and maternal health
• Nutrition: tied to maternal, newborn and child health and development and early
• childhood development
• Gender Based Violence (GBV): including ending child marriage and adolescent pregnancy
• HIV: with a focus on adolescents, Test and Start and Adherence to treatment

Supporting Issue Areas

• Malaria Prevention and Treatment
• Education, including keeping girls in school
• Civic Engagement with a focus on adolescents

Crosscutting Issue:

• Gender Equality

The Terms of Reference (TOR) for this solicitation are for conducting a representative cross-sectional endline evaluation of the two RSDs Kwishilya and Sinalamba. Proposals submitted in response to this solicitation will include only quantitative research proposals for the summative evaluation study. The target date for end of the broadcast is 27/07/2020. Pending ethical clearance, fieldwork should begin within 2 weeks after the end of the broadcast.

Scope of Work

The purpose of the endline survey is to generate endline information on socio-economic, demographic, and programmatic indicators that can be used for measuring progress in achieving project objectives and to evaluate the overall impact of the drama on the listening audience at the end of the project period. Specific tasks required by the research firm include:

• In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the research firm will specify in the proposal approaches best suited to conducting data collection that adheres to the guidelines of the Zambia Ministry of Health and WHO aimed at safeguarding the health and wellbeing of the Zambian public. These guidelines include but are not limited to wearing a face mask, social distancing, and using hand sanitizers and disinfectant wipes. The research firm will propose two approaches: 1) Conventional face-face interviews – the firm will describe in detail all necessary precautions and measures that comply with health guidelines to ensure the safety of both field staff, respondents, and their household members. 2) Alternative to conventional face-face interviews – the firm will describe in detail an alternative (non-contact) method of data collection with Zambian respondents. This may include the use of mobile phones or online surveys.
• Immediately upon signing of the contract, the research firm will make all the necessary arrangements for submitting a study protocol to the appropriate ethical clearance institution (s) in Zambia as a means to gain ethical clearance for the study. The proposal timeline for the study should include target dates for obtaining ethical clearance, finalizing questionnaires, consent forms that address human subjects’ protections language, and other materials needed to submit the protocol. Having ethical clearance permissions prior to the fieldwork is critical to the success of the study and should be prioritized over any other activity.
• There will be one endline survey conducted in Bemba in Central, Northern, Muchinga and Luapula provinces and in lozi in the Western province. The firm will conduct surveys in both rural and urban locations of these target provinces to reflect proportions of these provincial residents according to latest census data.  The endline survey needs to capture program indicators established by PMC and the donor – USAID. (PMC will provide the list of required indicators after contract signing).
• A representative sample of females (aged 15-49) and males (aged 15-59) in each of the target provinces should be interviewed for approximately 30 minutes each. Firms should describe in detail the survey design and protocol for random selection of respondents for the sample and demonstrate that it will meet statistical confidence levels at the P < .05 level, provincially.
• The research firm will submit a technical proposal and a financial proposal that includes cost per interview (CPI).
• The research firm will design the endline survey instrument in consultation with PMC’s Research Unit. The research firm will be responsible for translating all the survey instruments and consent forms into Bemba and Lozi. The firm will carry out a pretest of the draft instrument with a small sub-sample of rural and urban respondents (n=60). Results from the pretest should be shared with PMC and any modifications to the instrument should be justified by the pretest results.
• The research firm will be responsible for recruiting, training, and supervising interviewers for the survey. Fifty percent of interviewers should be women and 50% men to accommodate the necessity of females interviewing female respondents and males interviewing male respondents.
• The research firm will specify in its proposal the time needed to carry out the survey, including survey design, applying for ethical clearance, finalizing survey instrument, data collection, data entry, and writing of a technical report.
• The research firm will collect data and carry out data entry and cleaning.

The research firm will plan delivery of the final dataset and technical report no more than 10 weeks after contract award.

• The research firm will conduct survey coding and data entry with technical assistance as necessary from PMC. PMC’s Research Unit must approve logical consistency checks, the actual data entry template and other technical matters prior to the actual commencement of data entry.
• The research firm will only provide a technical report. Analysis and reporting will be done by PMC staff.

Deliverables

1. A final version of the survey instrument in English for review prior to
2. Weekly progress reports during data collection including number of completed surveys by cluster, response rates, and issues that may have emerged during data collection.
3. Endline technical report in English that describes in detail the sampling design, weighting variable calculation, survey methodology/fieldwork, process for selecting respondents, response rates calculation, and problems encountered in the field.
4. Data files and codebooks in SPSS Version 20 or higher in *.sav format. The Bemba and Lozi datasets and female and male datasets should all be merged into one unified final dataset.
5. Data should be well constructed and organized to facilitate quantitative analysis. Each variable name should reflect the question in the questionnaire it is measuring. Each variable should be labeled according to the question it is measuring. Values for each variable should be coded exactly as the response categories of the question it is measuring in the questionnaire.
6. Data should contain a sample weight variable and a response rate variable.

Scoring Criteria

This RFP seeks to determine the capacity of various agencies in Zambia to conduct a representative cross-sectional survey as per the stipulations provided in this document. Capacity to undertake the study contract will be evaluated according to a set of criteria including:

1)  Prior experience in conducting quantitative research;

2)  Sampling methodology;

3)  Description of ethical approval process and timing;

4)  Recruitment process for enumerators;

5)  Supervisory plan for overseeing and managing field staff during data collection;

6)  Training plan for the field teams or office teams;

7)  Contingency plans in case of bad weather, or any other eventualities;

8)  Data collection and data management plan to maintain data quality;

9) The feasibility of the timeline in completing major activities (including persons responsible for each activity, completion dates and a schedule of delivery);

10) Competitiveness of proposed budget; and

11) Strategy to comply with the COVID-19 measures which are aimed at safeguarding the health and wellbeing of the Zambian public.

Instructions

Please include a one-page cover letter signed by a responsible official of the bidding firm.  The letter should contain the name, mailing address, telephone number, and other relevant contact information of the bidder. For the technical proposal, please include a detailed work plan with project milestones and assigned staff. Please include also the curriculum vitae (CVs) of all key personnel as well as a list of references of three former or current clients for whom similar work was done (address, telephone number, and email).

The financial proposal should reflect the work plan and include sufficient staff (in terms of numbers of researchers and qualifications in conducting endline research). The financial proposal should also provide a detailed line item budget including all expenses related to the study including the travel of research teams to field research sites and any other related costs.  The budget justification should provide a description of how the costs were determined. Each line item should be justified in terms of unit cost, number of units, duration, etc. As PMC prefers to award a fixed price contract, bidders should ensure that their cost proposal constitutes a firm and reasonable reflection of all costs associated with implementing the proposed activities in the TOR.

Evaluation of Bids and Selection of Research Firm 

PMC will establish a technical review team to assess all proposals in terms of the scoring criteria described above. PMC plans to award the contract to the bidder that offers the best value, cost and responsiveness to the TOR. PMC reserves the right to reject any and all proposals received and to award no contract as a result of this TOR.

Timing

Proposals due: 15/07/2020

Contract signing: 22/ 07/ 2020

Fieldwork start: 15/08/2020

Dataset and report due: 28/09/2020

Please submit technical proposal and financial offers to Scott Connolly at [email protected] ; [email protected];[email protected]   and Abel Muwowo [email protected];

All written responses to this RFP must be submitted via e-mail no later than 4:00PM Lusaka time on 15/07/2020.