Call for Proposals for a firm to implement a survey to understand fruits and vegetables consumption, production, and sales in Sri Lanka

Background

Poor diets are a primary cause of malnutrition and the leading cause of diseases worldwide. Improving diets, including increasing fruit and vegetable intake, could save one in five lives lost annually. Micronutrients and dietary fiber are essential for health; micronutrients obtained from fruit and vegetables have a lower environmental footprint than from other foods, making fruit and vegetables essential to healthy and sustainable diets. Globally, fruit and vegetable intake is far below recommended levels, however, the extent and nature of the problem is poorly understood due to insufficient dietary data, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Increasing fruit and vegetable intake will require starting with consumers, understanding dietary patterns, and addressing desirability, accessibility, affordability, and availability barriers through cost-effective solutions. Solutions must take a holistic end-to-end approach that starts from intake and works back through the food system to improve accessibility of fruits and vegetables and increase year-round supply of a diverse range of safe, affordable, nutrient-dense vegetables.

FRESH (Fruits and Vegetables for Sustainable Healthy Diets), a recently launched One CGIAR Initiative, will use an end-to-end approach to increase fruits and vegetables intake, improve diet quality, nutrition and health while also improving livelihoods, empowering women, and youth, and mitigating negative environmental impacts.

Under FRESH, IFPRI will develop and implement a survey to understand fruits and vegetables consumption, production, and sales in rural, urban, and estate areas of Sri Lanka, including two Divisional Secretariats (DS Divisions), Balangoda and Welimada, where the surveys will be used to evaluate the impacts of FRESH end-to-end interventions, such as production hubs promoting good agricultural practices (GAPs).The survey will include a household census in primary sampling units (Grama Niladhari (GN) Divisions), interviews with households (where the household may include adolescent members, pregnant and lactating women, and primary school-aged children), and a village questionnaire with key informants in selected GN Divisions. The survey firm will collaborate with IFPRI to collect baseline data for this project in January-March 2024.

Overview of survey

The survey will likely be conducted in rural, urban, and estate areas of Sri Lanka between January and March 2024. Data will be collected at the village/GN level and household level, using pre-tested questionnaires and survey instruments. The survey will consist of a household listing in eligible GN Divisions, household surveys of sampled households, and village questionnaires.

In the GN Divisions, data collection will entail a listing of households and collecting community-level data from key informants. Key informants may include village leaders who can assist enumerators with identifying village demographic structure, infrastructure, employment characteristics, access to facilities, water tables, distance to markets, quality of power supplies, and the local food environment. In case the person cannot answer specific questions, he/she may be assisted by others in the village who have the relevant information.

For the household survey, we will sample households from the household listing. Respondents will include the main member responsible for agricultural decisions and practices (male or female) and the main member responsible for food preparation and food purchase (male or female). For a sub-sample of households, respondents may include adolescents and primary school-aged children. The sample is expected to include ~3,000 households. The final sampling approach and eligibility criteria of households will be determined by IFPRI.

Activities

The collaborator will coordinate the survey work that will be conducted as part of the project. The collaborator will provide all necessary supplies and services for survey preparations, data collection, and data processing for the study. This will include the following:

Survey preparation

Provide experienced enumerators and supervisors as required to carry out household census, household interviews and GN-level interviews with key informants in locations that are selected by the IFPRI researchers and the Collaborator. To this extent the collaborator will organize the selection, hiring, and payment of enumerators.

Participate in survey design and preparation, which will include:

Developing standard operating procedures, protocols, and manuals for conducting enumerator training and data collection. All documents should be prepared prior to enumerator training, in English and translated in Sinhala and Tamil. These documents will serve as the basis for quality assurance of the data collection process. The Collaborator will develop SOPs, manuals, and protocols with assistance from the IFPRI team.

Offer guidance and support in order to obtain local approval and appropriate clearance/authorization documents to conduct fieldwork.

Providing questionnaire translation services.

Supporting adaptation and pre-testing the survey questionnaires. The data will be collected via Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI). IFPRI has developed CAPI data entry programs for use in previous studies, however these may need to be adapted and expanded for the proposed study. The Collaborator may support this adaptation and will also be required to test and finalize (in consultation with IFPRI) the data entry programs for all interview types (village questionnaire, household listing, and household questionnaire).

Facilitate enumerator training in collaboration with IFPRI staff.

Develop a field schedule for the data collection team, which should include contact details for the field managers and supervisors so that IFPRI can conduct field visits.

Data collection and data entry

Conduct listing of households in all survey areas which will include, at a minimum, information on the number and age of all household members, and whether the household is engaged in agricultural activities.

Conduct a household survey with individuals sampled from the household listing mentioned in (i) above. The sampling criteria will be determined in consultation with IFPRI.

Conduct a GN-level survey with key informants in all survey areas participating in the household listing.

Document in appropriate detail and keep records of field activities. Field activity records should be developed to update the number of eligible households interviewed.

Assure data quality through ensuring availability of well-trained field supervisors and regular field visits to conduct quality checks, assure data quality and completeness, and adequate progress with the survey.

Share weekly progress of data collection and data entry (electronically).

Share data generated from CAPI with IFPRI every 2 weeks during data collection.

Data cleaning

Ensure data completeness and validity.

Prepare all household listing, household interview, key informant interview, and food environment datasets with variable labels and value labels in English following naming and labeling convention provided by IFPRI.

Provide responses to queries from IFPRI in relation to data processing or cleaning, as needed.

Provide a baseline data collection report including data collection, management, and cleaning process.

Timeline of activities

The proposed timetable for the work is as below:

Deliverables (due dates to be determined)

With input from IFPRI team, developed standards of procedure, manuals, and protocols to conduct successful enumerator training and data collection. Documents will be created in English, Sinhala, and Tamil

Survey Questionnaires translated from English into Sinhala and Tamil

List of experienced enumerators and supervisors to carry out household census, household interviews and GN-level interviews.

List of recommended locations for key informants interviews As advised by IFPRI, successful pre-testing the survey questionnaires using Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI).

As determined with IFPRI, routine field reports and/or status updates for the GN-level questionnaires with key informants

As determined with IFPRI, routine field reports and/or status updates for the household surveys

In format requested by IFPRI, prepare all household listing, household interview, key informant interview, and food environment datasets with variable labels and value labels in English following naming and labeling convention provided by IFPRI.

Submit final report on baseline data collection in format provided by IFPRI

Required qualifications

Company, NGO, or organization with proven professional experience in leading large-scale household data collection in Sri Lanka.

Track record of submitting deliverables on time.

Experience working with international and national researchers or research organizations.

Experience in building trusting and cordial relationships with local authorities, community leaders, and respondents.

Excellent communication skills in English.

Experience conducting fieldwork while observing preventive measures to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Technical and financial offer

The following items must be included in the technical offer:

A presentation of the firm and previous experience in conducting quantitative studies

Detailed CV of people who will be involved in the study

Detailed budget proposal for each activity, accompanied by a budget narrative