Terms of Reference for STATA Training for MEAL Staff – Garowe, Somalia

Terms of Reference

STATA Training for MEAL Staff

Introduction

CARE is an international NGO working in Somalia/Somaliland. CARE has a wide geographical footprint with an operational presence across Somalia’s six member states and Somaliland. CARE and its partners support vulnerable communities with the aim of addressing the underlying causes of poverty and inequality while promoting peace and development as well as providing assistance to mitigate the suffering caused by recurrent climatic shocks and conflicts. CARE strives to be a learning organization by having the best talent who are able to perform quality work. The organization is committed to developing talent by investing in its staff so as to strengthen their technical and leadership capacity. The organization promotes a culture of skill transfer, collaboration, and competitiveness to make room for the staff’s commitment to ensure high-quality program delivery which is achieved through management prioritization in investing in staff development for organizational gain while also wisely allocating limited resources. Moreover, the organization considers formal training, mentoring and coaching, conferences, staff exchanges, internal secondments, and networking, valid ways to inform and enhance staff competence and knowledge. These methods supplement on-the-job instruction and formal training programs and staff are expected to apply to learn from all development opportunities they have accessed.

Objective of the Training

The objective of the training is to provide capacity-building opportunities for CARE MEAL teams who are managing large data sets emanating from program implementation, especially during this period of severe drought and when program teams are handling huge data. The training will provide a hands-on experience in data management, cleaning, key analysis methods, and data sense-making.  This training will provide an opportunity for MEAL staff to magnify the work for their respective projects/programs by gaining cutting-edge skills in data management.

Methodology

The primary approach for this training is hands-on where the participating staff will dive right into the practical aspect of the training to quickly get their hands on whatever they’re learning. The training will model a variety of effective training methodologies, including short presentations, practical guidance, and demos as well as individual and group assignments. The course will be delivered within 10 days/6 hours each day. Therefore, the number of estimated hours for the course is 60 hours.

The training will be tailored to the actual work CARE performs and the instruction and exercise materials will be extracted from CARE’s work to increase the training’s relevance to staff roles. There will also be a pre and post-training assessment to measure how the training has impacted the staff’s efficiency and effectiveness in data management.

Participating staff are expected to touch base with the facilitator by committing their time to the training. In addition, the facilitator will provide extensive reading lists from different sources, and staff are expected to delve in before the class to save time.

Proposed training content

Below is tentatively proposed training content, however, the training facilitator will carry out a pre-training assessment to define the final training content in consultation with the MEAL specialist.

1. Introduction to Statistical Research Methods

• Identifying research questions
• Theories of Change and impact evaluation
• Setting evaluation hypothesis
• Setting and Estimating Comparison and counterfactuals groups
• Theories for impact evaluation (RCT, Experimental, ques- experimental etc)
• Sampling and sample size calculation
• Effect size estimation and power size
• Clustering effect and stratification

1. Introduction to STATA Program

• Stata features, variables, and command
• Managing data using STATA (creating do files cleaning, formatting, labelling, sorting, merging, and restructuring, converting variables etc)
• Running basic data analysis using STATA commands

1. Analysis of continuous outcome

• Descriptive statistics and confidence interval estimation, including Stata graphics
• Normality test of a continuous variable, data quality assessment with STATA
• One sample t-test/ Signtest and signrank test
• Two sample t-test/Wilcoxon rank sum test
• One-way analysis of variance/Kruskal Wallis test
• Multiple Linear regression with assumption test/ Quantile regression analysis

1. Analysis of categorical outcomes

• Odds ratio, Incidence, prevalence, confidence interval estimation and risk difference estimation
• Two by two contingency tables with chi-square test, Fisher’s exact test, and goodness of fit test
• Logistic regression analysis
• Multinomial Logistic Regression
• Ordinal Logistic Regression

Expected outcome

1. Staff will gain practical knowledge in the use of STATA program.
2. Staff will demonstrate and improved capacity in data quality management using STATA program.
3. Staff will get basic statistical knowledge which will be useful in their day-to-day operations
4. Staff will apply the gained skills and knowledge to their respective programs.
5. Promote the data quality management systems of their programs.

Time line

The training will be five full days from 9th to 20th Oct 2022 and will take place in Garowe.

Role of the consultant

• Doing training needs assessment
• Developing training tools
• Facilitating training sessions

Role of CARE International-          Facilitate logistics and accommodation while on the assignment in Somalia

• Payment of the consultant fees
• Organising training facilities and ensuring participants come in good time

Deliverables

1. Training inception report
2. Final report including the presentations of activities implemented
3. Reference material including reading lists.
4. Tools