Maziko endline survey

Background

Children in Malawi face high rates of malnutrition and are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential. In Malawi, community-based childcare centres (CBCC) can be cost-effective platforms for scaling-up nutrition social behaviour change (SBC) interventions. However, evidence also suggests potential synergies from coupling nutrition SBC to cash transfers (CT) in Malawi, given that rural households face high levels of poverty and recurring extreme lean season food-security shocks.

The Maziko trial is aimed at evaluating the cost-effectiveness of using CBCCs and parenting care-groups as platforms to improve maternal diets, and child nutrition and development by providing nutrition-sensitive behaviour change and cash transfer intervention packages in communities already receiving a standard of care Government early childhood development (ECD) SBC program. We designed a 3-year cluster randomised trial in 2 districts of Malawi, including 160 communities randomised to one of four treatment arms: 1) Standard of Care (SoC) arm: Receiving the standard Government ECD SBC program; 2) SBC arm: Receiving the SoC intervention with additional nutrition, ECD and agriculture SBC activities to improve nutritious food production, diets and care practices for young children; 3) Low CT arm: SoC plus SBC plus a maternal and child cash transfer ~20US$ per month; and 4) High CT arm: SoC plus SBC plus a maternal and child CT ~35US$ per month. Primary outcomes include the mean probability of adequacy of diets for index women and the Malawi Developmental Assessment Tool (MDAT) z-score in all index children aged in utero to <2y at baseline. Intermediate outcomes along the program impact pathways will also be measured, including child nutrition status and development.

The survey comprises several different components, including:

· Household interview

· Mother and father interview

· 24hr dietary assessment for index mother and index children

· Child development assessment using modified MDAT for all index children

· Anthropometry assessment for all index mothers and children, and younger siblings

· CBCC interviews

· Market surveys

Activities

This scope of work covers the endline survey activities from February 2025 to July 2025. IFPRI is searching for a survey firm to undertake the endline survey.

Developing a detailed budget, logistics and timeline for the endline survey and related activities: the budget will be detailed and include field work, enumerators and coordinators salaries and per diem, logistic costs for the survey. The logistics plan will include timings for survey, as well as plans for staffing and team organization.

Facilitating submission of the study protocol to appropriate ethics board in Malawi.

Support preparation of dietary assessment protocol and tools, including standardisation of portion sizes. The survey firm will assist the IFPRI team in preparing the requested tool box for dietary assessment. The tool box will include tools for portion sizes measurement and for food identification. Specifically, the collaborator will:

Provide logistical support and assistance in preparation and standardization of recipes of salted replicas for the most consumed staple foods.

Provide logistical support and assistance in preparation, calibration and standardization of wooden food models

Provide logistical support and assistance in preparation and standardization of other relevant tools for the tool box

Support the preparation of the MDAT kit, collaborator will assist the IFPRI team in preparing the MDAT assessment kits

Finalising and field testing the survey questionnaires using tablets:The survey firm will be responsible for the field test of the survey questionnaires, including the identification of villages where field tests can be conducted, clearance from relevant authorities, transport to and from the field, and provision of relevant supplies.

Recruitment and training of enumerators and supervisors:

The training will last for 2-3 weeks (~15 training days), including 3 days of pre-test in the field.

The survey firm will be responsible for all logistical aspects of the training with support from the Save the Children program manager, including:

· Provide the training room and training material.

· Printing of all relevant documents on paper (questionnaires, information sheets).

· Providing all lunches and coffee breaks during training.

Throughout the training, each enumerator will be evaluated for its overall qualifications, understanding of the questionnaire, field capacities and general motivation. The best enumerators will be retained to be part of the survey. Of them, a few will be nominated to serve as team leaders (depending on how many teams will be necessary), and the remaining as enumerators. The team will also include enough back checkers to duplicate 10% of interviews for quality control.

Survey data collection: the survey firm will be fully responsible for the survey data collection, including the following activities:

· Completing data collection including market, CBCC, household and individual level data collection.

· Transport of enumerators to all survey sites in well maintained vehicles adapted to the study area. Each vehicle used for the survey shall be duly insured, covering each of its passengers for all eventualities happening when in the vehicle.

· Organize and implement planning of surveys

· Organize referral to the closest health facility for children presenting severe acute malnutrition (SAM)

· Organize referral to the closest health facility for women at risk of suicide.

· Organize for enumerators’ electronic data to be uploaded weekly

· Organize weekly reporting to IFPRI on field activities including reporting on the status of survey interviews.

· Back checks of survey interviews and second day dietary recalls on a sub-sample of the study population (10%)

· Provide survey field report upon completion of the data collection, including feedback on field work, interviews, logistics and other survey related information

Essential Qualifications

• Ability to provide adequate logistical resources to organize, train, deploy, and supervise survey staff
• Demonstrated capability to conduct interviews in target languages while providing data and documentation in English
• Previous experience with implementing large-scale phone surveys that use a CAPI software platform
• Access to trained enumerators that have previously conducted large in-person surveys, including a sufficient number who are fluent in the local languages
• Demonstrated capability to conduct interviews in target languages while providing data and documentation in English
• Demonstrated experience in collecting dietary recall, child development and child anthropometry data
• Demonstrated capability in developing and implementing data quality control and data cleaning protocols

Applications

Please submit a letter of interest along with a proposal, detailed budget, and CV of team leader. All documents shall be uploaded as one pdf to the application section indicating CV or Resume by March 11, 2025