Background and Objective of the Survey

USAID’s Office of Food for Peace (FFP) is the U.S. Government leader in international food assistance. FFP plans to fund new five-year development food assistance projects in Bangladesh and Mali. Before the new projects are carried out, FFP will fund a baseline study in the selected areas of each country. The purpose of the baseline study is to assess the current status of key indicators, to have a better understanding of prevailing conditions and perceptions of the FFP projects’ populations in the implementation areas in Bangladesh, and to serve as a point of comparison for future final evaluations. Results will also be used to refine further project targeting and, where possible, to understand the relationship between variables to inform project design. The baseline study is designed as the first step in a two-part evaluation, with the final evaluation as the second step. The baseline survey was conducted in 2016, while the final evaluations are expected to be conducted as close as possible to the end of the project.

Sample size and Survey population

The FFP baseline survey was carried out in 11 districts– 8 in CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere) areas, 2 in World Vision (WV) areas, and 1 in HKI  (Hellen Keller International) areas. The sample was chosen employing a three stage “cluster” sampling method (where a village was defined as a cluster), with a stratification for each FFP project area. The three stages were: 1) selection of clusters (villages), 2) selection of households within villages, and 3) selection of individuals within households. At the first stage, a total of 258 clusters were selected, including 86 clusters from each area. The selection of the clusters was done by ICF. Thereafter, the list of selected clusters was provided to Mitra and Associates. The 86 clusters from a project area were selected using probability proportional to size sampling (PPS) method from its sampling frame built with the listed households. Then, within each cluster, 20 households containing at least one child less than 5 years of age were sampled from a sub-frame of households with children less than 5 years of age – and the children’s module were administered to these households. Similarly, 15 households containing no children less than 5 years of age were selected within each cluster from a sub-frame of households containing no children less than 5 years of age – and all other modules were administered to these households. From the sample of 20 households selected for the children’s module, 7 households were sub-sampled in a second phase selection – and all other modules were administered to these households as well. Overall, 35 households were selected from each cluster, yielding a sample size of 3,010 households for each of the three projects.

Activities Carried out by Mitra

The major activities caried out by Mitra are including participation in the baseline planning workshop; development of survey protocol; review, translation and formatting of questionnaires; pretesting and finalization of the questionnaires; development of sampling frame and drawing of primary sampling unit (PAU); development of data entry program using CS-Pro; listing of household, collection of GPS readings and mapping of PUSs; recruitment and training of field personnel; conducting survey; editing of completed questionnaires before data entry with categorization of open ended responses; data entry with 100% double entry; cleaning and finalization of datasets through internal consistency check (ICC) and resolving discrepancies through referral to the original questionnaire; data analysis and preparation of frequency distributions from the data set to see the accuracy of the data; preparation  of a preliminary data set and a final data set, both with appropriate documentation; submission of a draft report describing all data collection and data management procedures, supervisor observations/comments, and limitations/ problems encountered; submission of clean data sets with code book; and providing technical assistance in writing of the report.

Client reference: The project was awarded by ICF Macro Inc., 9300 Lee Highway, Fairfax, VA 22031-1207 USA, Phone: +1.703.934.3603 or +1.800.532.4783, Email: info@icfi.com and funded by USAID, Washington, USA. The contact person for quantitative survey: Ms. Jasbir Kaur, Project Manager, Contact Number: +1 301 572-0486E-mail: jasbir.kaur@icfi.com and for qualitative survey Susan Pietrzyk, Qualitative Lead, Contact Number: 301.572.0806, E-mail: susan.pietrzyk@icfi.com.