For organisations

We believe that our network of researchers can provide on-time, quality research to enhance the monitoring and evaluation capacity of your organisation. That is exactly why we set up the Africa Research Network. A service by the development community for the development community.

Your data, your research, your ideas, your methods, your concepts, your principles...

...our field people

With a network of almost 5,000 field staff in 11 countries (and growing) we can do great things. Together.

Our goals

We understand that sometimes organisations like NGOs prefer to keep as much of their research in-house as possible. But you still need enumerators, field people who can go collect the data, organise focus group discussions or conduct interviews. Local, knowledgeable enthusiasts with the local language skills, the cultural understanding and the contacts.

That is exactly why we set up the Africa Research Network. A service by the development community for the development community.

We can help you with:

Contact us to see how we can work together

Recruit & Deploy

How enumerators are recruited has important consequences for data collection. Sometimes organizations contract individuals directly but subcontracting an organization like the Africa Research Network has its benefits.

We can perform a range of tasks for your project, including vetting and selecting, hiring, training, deploying and monitoring enumerators for data collection... and thus help you ensure data quality

Enumerators are given research tools such as an interview guide, questionnaire or household survey and asked to collect information in a specific location or area from a certain number of individuals or households or groups. This may be necessary for one or both of the following reasons:

  • the quantity of data required – most research projects (including evaluations) usually survey hundreds of households or people;
  • the type of data required – many research and evaluation projects rely on the local understanding of someone familiar with a given context to collect meaningful information, requiring, for example, specific linguistic, social and cultural attributes.

Staff training

Enumerator training is an extremely important part of the primary data collection, and should be planned in advance. It is a joint effort between the organisation, the field coordinator (s), the contracting organisation and other members of the research team. The research team must prepare and approve an enumerator manual or field manual that forms the basis for the training content, and will guide the research.

Field staff training is a crucial element of collecting high quality data. Regardless of how well designed a data collection instrument and software application is, the quality of data collected depends ultimately on the data collection skills of the enumerators who conduct the interviews, as well as enumeration supervisors. Thorough training ensures that:

  • Enumerators fully understand the objectives of the data collection exercise
  • Enumerators are familiar with the data collection questionnaire
  • Enumerators are confidentially familiar with the data collection device and application
  • Enumerators are effective interviewers and can administer the interviews easily, accurately and consistently.
Training schedules should familiarize enumerators with project objectives, understanding and practice of data collection questionnaire, devices and software applications. Prior to conducting the suggested training, the training team together with the client should develop enumerator reference material that should be given to enumerators during the training.

The success of mobile field data collection exercises also depends on a well-prepared deployment plan and supporting logistics. Arrangements for field deployment of enumerators and logistics depends on the project scale and geographical distribution.

Methodology support

From experience, we know that choosing the right approaches - beyond the generic term 'mixed methods' - is not easy. Which is why we can also assist your organisation to develop research methodologies that will accuratly measure what you need to know.

We can work with you and your research team in asking the right questions based on in-depth research of literature, our experience and based on what is feasible in the field, with your budget and within a give time frame.

But social research would not be complete if we were just happy with 'surveys' and quantitative data. We can also help with the qualitative side of the research and help define the parameters and questions for structured interviews or focus group discussions with key informants, which will either illustrate or elucidate the numerical data.

Research

  1. Baseline studies
  2. Needs assessments
  3. Impact assessments

Evaluations

  1. Project Monitoring
  2. Mid-term evaluations
  3. Final evaluations

Methodology support

Designing a good methodology is a multistage process that requires attention to detail and a great deal of study and orientation.We can help with the full cycle of social research - and survey development.

Research development

  1. Problem definition
  2. Literature studies & Bibliographies
  3. Research question definition
  4. Questionnaire development
  5. Report writing

Survey development

  1. Question development
  2. Field testing of surveys
  3. Sample definition
  4. Reliability & Validity testing
  5. Data Analysis

Covid-19 Resilience

Safe working conditions - for the field staff and the people they interact with alike - are of the utmost concern to us. The CoronaVirus pandemic has drastically changed the how we approach human interactions. Especially when working with vulnerable populations such as those displaced, the sick, the elderly.

From the onset of the pandemic, we have adjusted how we work and how we can adapt our methodologies to continue to collect meaningful data without risking the health of our field researchers or the people they interview.

Training, training and more training

We have developed an online training module Basic employee training on Covid-19 infection prevention and during in-person training, we reinforce and test this knowledge.

We also make whenever possible masks and hydroalcoholic gel available to all field staff for the duration of the assignment - or we require the organisation that hires our staff to do so.

More remote data collection

Although nothing can replace in-person interviews, COVID-19 has made us rethink (qualitative) data collection - and to rely on online training and interview tools.

  • Virtual qualitative interviews (with speech-to-text recognition)
  • Online group discussion web platforms
  • Online group discussion web platforms
  • Existing project and public data sources (e.g. World Bank, UN, Google...)
  • Crowd-sourced information from project stakeholders