Myanmar: Follow up Survey: BRACED Myanmar Alliance Project

Terms of Reference

Follow up Survey: BRACED Myanmar Alliance Project

A. SUMMARY

On behalf of the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) Myanmar Alliance, Plan International Myanmar is looking for a Myanmar based survey firm - to implement a follow up survey of the BRACED Myanmar Alliance Project (2015 – 2017) - "Building the resilience of over 350,000 people across Myanmar to climate extremes".

The follow up survey aims to measure mid-term results of the BRACED Myanmar Alliance Project focusing on key indicators following its baseline survey implemented in 2015, and media outreach on resilience messaging and communication among wider audience.

The follow up survey field works (including data collection) is expected to be conducted from Mid-November to Mid December 2016, and final report is to be submitted by 10 January 2017.

Myanmar based national survey firms are highly encouraged to apply.

The deadline for submitting the proposal is by 2 November 2016, 5:30 PM Yangon Time.

B. THE BRACED PROJECT

The BRACED Alliance Myanmar Project has adopted a unique model of policy, action and media outreach - a diverse collaboration amongst local and international partners on combining DRR, CCA, environmental sustainability, community-development, policy, gender, and livelihoods expertise - to improve community and institutional understanding of climate risk, drive increased responsiveness, and promote scale-up and replication of resilient practices in the face of climate extremes. The project's log-frame is based on the following impact, outcome and outputs aims:

· Impact: Improved well-being and reduced losses and damages of vulnerable populations despite climate shocks and stresses

· Outcome: Vulnerable communities, driven by women and children an supported by effective institutions, are more resilient to climate extremes and disasters by 2017

· Output 1: Communities, especially women and children, are equipped with the knowledge and skills to mitigate the risks of and recover from climate shocks and stresses

· Output 2: Institutions are coordinated, responsive, accountable and inclusive in their management of climate risks

· Output 3: The Evidence Base is strengthened and learning on managing climate extremes is disseminated to inform and influence the resilience related policy strategies and agenda at sub national, national and global levels.

The BRACED Alliance Myanmar Project targets 155 communities in 8 Townships in 3 diverse climatic zones - the Central Dry Zone, Coastal Zone and Hilly Areas – where vulnerable groups are increasingly exposed to extreme climate events including: i) cyclones/strong winds; ii) floods/storm surges; iii) intense rains; iv) extreme temperatures and v) drought[1]. The impacts of these climate extremes are further exacerbated locally by processes attributed to climate change and variability. These include the shortening and intensification of monsoons; an increase in sea surface temperature and an overall increase in heat and drought indices[2]. Environmental degradation and deforestation in particular, combined with diminishing water resources compound the overall vulnerability of Burmese/Myanmar communities[3].

C. The survey Implementation Modality:

This survey has two parts:

· Part I: Follow up survey will focus on measuring progress of the BRACED Myanmar Alliance Project’s direct results in 155 villages across 8 townships taking representative sample size and strategy adopted in its baseline survey 2015.

· Part II: Tracker Survey will focus on measuring media outreach on resilience messaging through BRACED’s partner BBC Media Action across 8 townships targeting 1.7 million population.

PART I: Mid-line Survey

I. Objective:

· To measure mid-term results of the BRACED Myanmar Alliance Project focusing on key indicators following its baseline survey implemented in 2015.

II.Descriptionof the Key Tasks:

The assignment includes following:

o Fully familiarize the BRACED Myanmar Alliance Baseline study including methodology, sampling, questionnaires, findings and recommendations.

o Work with BRACED M&E Manager and M&E Working Group in finalizing survey questionnaires (household level, village level and township level) built on baseline survey questionnaires. Ensure quality translation of survey questionnaires into Burmese and Aakha (Shan) languages. Transcribe the questionnaires into Computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI)

o Develop data collection and quality assurance training manual and interview protocol in English and translate them into Burmese.

o Recruit and train qualified survey team that can collect data from 1,150 households, 68 CBOs and 40 key targeted offices in 8 BRACED townships within 20 days using 3 specific set of questionnaires. The household survey will take around 40 minutes per household, and village and township survey will take around 20 minutes per institution.

o Field test of the survey questionnaires with hands on training to the survey team. Revise the survey questionnaires based on feedback from survey team.

o Rollout the follow up survey with strong quality assurance system and technical support at the field.

o Clean raw data sets and share with BRACED M&E Manager.

o Analyse data and create tabulations following Baseline survey tabulation and share with BRACED M&E Manager.

o Produce follow up survey report with analysis which allows to see comparable progress of the project compared to the baseline status on the project’s key indicators - as agreed with BRACED M&E Manager - including ICF KPI 4[4].

Note: The data collection and analysis of the HH survey should be disaggregated by sex, age group and township as possible and applicable.

III. Sampling to be used:

The proposed mid-line survey is expected to run as panel survey following same sampling strategy used in the Baseline Survey. Below tables provide an overview idea on sampling strategy and size used in baseline survey.

Township

Rural/ Urban

# of target villages/ wards

# of sample target villages/ wards

# of target hlds

Design Effect

sample Target villages/ wards HH total

sample target villages/ wards HH total(fpc adjusted)

sample target villages/ wards HH total with RR of 0.95

sample average no. of HH per target villages/ wards

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

Hpa An

Rural

10

5

1,024

1.2

115

104

109

22

Laputta

Rural

16

7

3,777

1.4

134

130

137

20

Meiktila

Rural

30

13

2,688

1.8

173

162

171

13

Kyaukphyu

Rural

30

13

7,757

1.8

173

169

178

14

Taungup

Rural

40

18

13,226

2.0

192

190

200

11

Kengtung

Rural

19

9

1,456

1.5

144

131

138

15

Dagon Seikan

Rural /Urban

5

2

4,109

1.2

115

112

118

59

Mawlamyine

Rural

5

2

5,340

1.2

115

113

119

59

Total

155

69

39,377

1162

1111

1169

PART II: Media Tracker Survey

I. Study background:

As part of the BRACED project in Myanmar, BBC Media Action has produced a number of radio and television public service announcements (PSAs) designed to increase understanding of climate risks and improve preparedness for such events. The content of the PSAs are based on information related to cyclones and floods. They feature contributors from selected rural areas in Myanmar demonstrating why and how they personally cope with weather difficulties and climate issues. Radio PSAs are around 90 seconds to two minutes long; television PSAs are around three to four minutes in duration.

The PSAs have been broadcast nationally on Myanmar Radio and MRTV and distributed to partners for community outreach across the BRACED target townships. The Tracker study will be used to measure the reach of the PSAs within BRACED target townships (excluding 155 BRACED villages where high intensity interventions have taken place).

II. Objectives:

The key objectives of the study are to answer the following research questions:

1. What is the reach of the BBC Media Action PSAs and the audience profile of these groups (broken down by key demographics)?

2. What percentage of those reached by BBC Media Action PSAs report improved understanding of resilience topics as a result of exposure?

3. What percentage of those reached by BBC Media Action PSAs report that their resilience to shocks and/or stresses in their environment has improved?

III. Sampling:

The PSA Tracker study and midline survey will follow different sampling strategies. The PSA Tracker study will take representative sample villages and households from 8 BRACED targeted townships, excluding 155 BRACED villages where high intensity interventions are taking place. Sampling will be completed by clustering BRACED townships into ecological zones (Central Dry Zone, Coastal Zone and Hilly Areas). The sample size required will be around n=1,000 respondents.

Respondents will be:

· Adults (age 15+)

· Located in urban and rural areas across the target BRACED townships.

· Men and women (50:50 split; we expect the agency to detail in their proposal how they aim to ensure this split)

The sampling plan will be confirmed in consultation with BBC Media Action, the selected agency and the BRACED M&E team.

IV. Questionnaire:

The questionnaire will be designed by BBC Media Action and is expected to take no longer than 30 minutes. This questionnaire will mainly include closed questions, agreement statements and possibly a few open-ended questions, most with code lists.

A comprehensive pilot will need to be conducted to ensure respondents understanding key terms included in the survey like ‘resilience’.

The questionnaire will need to be translated into Burmese and other appropriate ethnic languages by the agency. It is very important that the translations are carried out by native speakers, ensuring that the translated questionnaires are both easy to comprehend for the respondents as well as consistent with the original English version, especially for the key concepts and scales used. BBC Media Action will thoroughly check the translated questionnaires using experienced translators.

Visual and/or audio stimuli will be used to facilitate respondents’ recall of the PSAs which BBC Media Actions produce or support. We invite suggestions in the research design on how best to use visual and/or audio tools to stimulate recall of the PSAs.

V.Descriptionof the Key Tasks:

The assignment includes the following:

o Work with the BBC Media Action team in finalizing survey questionnaires and stimulus to be used in the study.

o Ensure quality translation of survey questionnaires into Burmese and ethnic translations (or completed with the support of a translator).

o Transcribe the questionnaires into Computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI)

o Develop a data collection and quality assurance training manual and interview protocol in English and translate them into Burmese.

o Recruit and train qualified survey team that can collect data from around 1,000 interviews across BRACED’s 8 target townships.

o Complete a pilot test of the survey questionnaires. Revise the survey questionnaires based on feedback from survey team.

o Complete the remaining interviews with high levels of support and quality assurance.

o Deliver clean raw SPSS data sets.

o Once BBC Media Action has completed necessary cleaning and weighting of the SPSS file, create data tables based on specifications outlined by BBC Media Action.

VI.Deliverables from BBC Media Action:**

o A questionnaire with interviewer instructions and showcards

o Guidance for the interviewers

o Agreement on the sampling approach

o Any audio and video stimuli to be used during the interviews

o A researcher from BBC Media Action to support enumerators training on the survey instrument

o Codebook for data entry in SPSS format

o Feedback on cleaning and data checking errors

o Guidelines for data analysis and reporting

o Field report template

VII.Deliverables from the agency:**

o A fieldwork, training and contingency plan (in case of disruption of fieldwork due to a changing security situation).

o A full pilot to test questionnaire and use of stimuli, as well as a short pilot report detailing feedback from the pilot

o A fully briefed and trained interview team consisting of female and male enumerators

o Final research instruments (questionnaires and prompt cards) translated into Burmese and any further relevant ethnic languages, back-translated into English once they have been finalised by BBC Media Action and based on pilot feedback

o Provisions for translators in the field to support implementation of the study.

o Fieldwork Plan

o Weekly fieldwork update reports over email and telephone

o First 100 cases in SPSS file for preliminary data quality check by BBC Media Action

o Cleaned dataset in SPSS format with clearly labelled variables and values

o A full run of tables for all variables against key column headers to be specified by BBC Media Action

o A detailed technical report outlining the methodology used as well as any changes to the approach between proposal stage and data delivery, as well as difficulties encountered during fieldwork and mitigation strategies used.

D. DELIVERABLES AND MILESTONES FOR PAYMENT

The follow up survey field works (including data collection) is expected to be conducted as follows.

Deliverables are expected in the following timeline.

SN

Deliverables for Part I Survey

Deliverables for Part II Survey

Timeline

% of payment

A.

Upon signing the contract

As soon as possible

20% of total Contract Amount

B

Submission and acceptation of inception report - describing clear methodology and action plan, and ensuring following documents/deliverables:

· Questionnaire finalized, translated and transcribed into CAPI

· Data collection training and quality assurance manual and interview protocols developed and translated into Burmese.

Submission and acceptation of inception report - describing clear methodology and action plan, and ensuring following documents/deliverables:

· Questionnaire finalized by BBC Media Action translated into local languages and transcribed into CAPI

· Data collection training and quality assurance manual and interview protocols developed and translated into Burmese.

Within 15 days of contract commencement

40 % of total Contract Amount

C.

Submission and acceptation of:

· Survey team recruited and trained with hands on training on CAPI based interview

· Survey questionnaires field tested and updated

· Survey rolled out

· Clean data sets produced

· Data analysed and tabulated following Baseline survey analysis and shared with BRACED M&E Manager and agreed

· Produced follow up survey report with analysis which allows to see progress of the project results compared to the baseline status on the project’s key indicators - as agreed with BRACED M&E Manager - including ICF KPI 4[5].

· Make presentation of headline findings with BRACED Team

Submission and acceptation of:

· Survey team recruited and trained with hands on training on CAPI based interview

· Survey questionnaires field tested and updated

· Survey rolled out

· Clean data sets produced

· Data analysed and tabulated

· Clean data sets along with syntax used in the study

· Final technical fieldwork report

Within 50 days of contract commencement

20 % of total Contract Amount

D.

Final report - satisfying the Specific Deliverables listed above in the TOR

· 3 hard copies of the report

· Electronic copy of the report in flash drive

· Clean data sets along with syntax used in the study

NA

Within 75 days of contract commencement

20% of total contract amount

E. SELECTION CRITERIA

Minimum eligibility criteria of Qualified survey firm:

Proofs of officially registered, timely renewed and operational in Myanmar

Directly implemented at least 3 similar (same scale/sample size) surveys in Myanmar in last 2 years. Any survey managed by international consulting from via outsourcing to the local firm will not be considered.

Fully equipped and experienced in conducting survey using CAPI with demonstrated proof of 3 HH survey conducted using CAPI in last 2 years.

Minimum Eligibility for Survey Team Leader:

1. Master's degree in statistics, economics or relevant field.
2. Must have proven knowledge and 10 year professional experience in designing and implementing large scale HH Survey
3. Served as team leader for similar survey in past, and performed high quality analysis and produced report in English.
4. Strong command over statistical software (such as SAS, SPSS, STATA and/or R), statistical/economic modelling, data analysis and complex data interpretation skills

Note: Applicant firms are expected to include CVs of key personals to be engaged in the survey – clarifying their roles and responsibilities in the survey.

F. SUPERVISION AND SUPPORT

The selected survey company will work under overall guidance of the BRACED Alliance Coordinator and direct supervision of BRACED Alliance M&E Manager and BBC MA Research Manager. The survey company will work in collaboration with BRACED Alliance Partners and the BRACED Myanmar Alliance M&E Working Group and will receive guidance from the BRACED M&E Knowledge Manager, Engagement Leader and Plan UK.

M&E Manager, BRACED Alliance Myanmar will serve as a primary contact person for this study.

The BRACED Alliance Coordination Unit and BBC MA will provide reference materials and facilitate meetings and workshop logistics and arrangements, and technical inputs on drafts.

The survey company will be responsible for arrangement of all required travels and logistics.

[1] Myanmar’s National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to Climate Change (Government of Myanmar: 2012)

[2] Climate Change Adaptation in Myanmar (Department of Hydrology and Meteorology: 2012)

[3] Myanmar’s National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to Climate Change (Government of Myanmar: 2012)

[4] See BRACED Myanmar Alliance Project baseline study report about the composite index/KPI4, baseline value and calculation procedure.

[5] See BRACED Myanmar Alliance Project baseline study report about the composite index/KPI4, baseline value and calculation procedure.

Interested Survey Company should submit the following application documents:

a) Expression of interest addressing track record following selection criteria mentioned in section E of this TOR

b) Technical proposal for conducting both Part I and Part II survey as mentioned section C of this TOR

c) CVs of key professionals/specialists

d) An example of previous similar work.

e) Financial Proposal in separate closed envelop, which includes budget (separating core consultancy costs, daily rates of team members, travel and in-country data collection costs).

For technical queries and clarification related to this assignmentplease write to:** bhushan.shrestha@plan-international.org;

The proposals to be submitted either via email (Myanmar.CO@plan-international.org) or in hard copy at the Plan International Myanmar Office in below address by 2 November 2016, 5:30 PM Yangon Time.

Plan International Myanmar

No 7, Kanbawza Street, Bahan Township, Yangon, Myanmar

Tel: +95 09-259323690; 09-259323691; 09-259323692

Fax: +95 (1) 01-860-4734