International Consultancy : Evidence and Data Synthesis and Analysis (Open to Non Malawian Nationals Only)

Contract

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UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, Empowerment...

UNICEF Malawi places evidence-informed thinking at the heart of its strategic planning. Evidence is key to understanding the barriers that hold Malawian children back, and to developing the solutions that can overcome those barriers to ensure that no child is left behind. Malawi UNICEF Country Office undertakes and commissions evaluations, research and studies on emerging or current issues of relevance for children to inform the strategic directions, policies and programmes of UNICEF and its partners. The office explores emerging issues, identifies data and research gaps, and brings together existing evidence to support or undertake new research, data collection and analysis to address critical questions within the Malawi Country Office.

The Research, Evaluation and Knowledge Management (REKM) section within which this consultancy assignment is located plays a leading role in building a knowledge culture across UNICEF-Malawi and beyond by providing essential guidance and tools to strengthen the generation, communication and use of evidence in decision-making including across the following areas:-

Ethical Evidence Generation

The REKM Section provides substantial advisory support to ensure the application of ethical standards across all of Malawi UNICEF’s research, evaluation, and data collection activities, particularly those that engage with children.

Research Uptake and Impact

The section works with UNICEF colleagues to enhance research uptake by commissioning independently verifiable studies, supporting thinking about use of evidence for programme improvement and brokering knowledge translation activities with external partners.

Building Skills and Capacities Internally and with Research Partners

The section produces a variety of training and capacity-building tools for UNICEF staff and others including methodological briefs, online and face to face training courses and webinars. It works to bring together civil society, academic and government partners to strengthen research ecosystems including enhancing the use of evidence in policy and programming and strengthening evidence literacy and critical thinking.

Evidence Synthesis

To frame UNICEF-Malawi research in the context of the global body of evidence, the section works with key partners to produce evidence synthesis products, such as Evidence Maps, Evidence Gap Maps, Systematic Reviews, Rapid Evidence Assessments and Rapid Reviews.

Therefore, the REKM section would like to know more about the nature and distribution of evidence to inform programming and future research. To this end, UNICEF-Malawi seeks the services of a Consultant to carry out Evidence Synthesis to inform and support programmes through secondary analysis, meta-reviews and synthesis work based on evidence collected through UNICEF-Malawi research and evaluation reports; including documentation of lessons learnt to inform programme course corrections and improvement.

Malawi Country Programme

The overall goal of the UNICEF Malawi Country Programme of Cooperation, 2019-2023 is to contribute to the Government of Malawi’s efforts to implement and decentralize policies related to children, focusing on the most disadvantaged and deprived. The CP is working on having the children’s rights progressively respected and fulfilled so they survive, grow and develop to their full potential in an inclusive and protective society. The CP is aligned with country and UNICEF regional and global priorities and is expected to contribute to the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) III, 2018- 2022, and the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF), 2019-2023, while concurrently working toward the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The CP has four pillars that are supportive of a rights-based, equity-focused and life-cycle approach, including (1) Early Childhood Pillar, aged 0-5, with a focus on the first 1,000 days; (2) School-age Children Pillar, aged 6 up to 18, with a focus on young adolescents, aged 10-14; (3) Child-friendly, Inclusive, Resilient Communities Pillar that supports an enabling environment for the realization of the goals of the other two pillars encompassing the full life cycle of childhood; and (4) Programme Effectiveness Pillar, which supports quality assurance and cross-cutting programmatic and operational elements to facilitate coordination and implementation of risk-informed programmes.

How can you make a difference?

This assignment will synthesize the 2019-2022 Malawi-UNICEF available evidence. The work will involve screening, quality appraisal, technical review and analysis, data extraction activities; report writing activities as necessary. Specifically, the responsibilities will include:

• Scoping and protocol: An initial review of the findings of bilateral consultations. This will take place ahead of the ES, to define the scope and methodology for the assignment. This stage may also entail a short desk-based scoping exercise, to determine the extent and nature of evidence including all evaluation and research work at MCO. This will help inform decisions on the thematic scope. The results of the consultations and desk-based scoping will form the basis of an ES conceptual framework (which may be based on the CP pillars (themes)), research question, and inclusion criteria. This information will be included in an ES protocol to prevent duplication of effort and to enable transparent peer review, working closely with key UNICEF staff.
• Production of ‘Evidence Speaks’ - a final systematic and objective overview: produced summarizing what is known about the distribution and quality/rigour of existing evidence from research. Short summaries, action required on recommendations and links to the relevant studies/reports should be included. This should be produced using rigorous and systematic methods consistent with current standards for literature searching, screening, quality appraisal and data extraction. containing a summary Brief describing the EGM’s key messages and state of the evidence base, an overview of the findings including strategic identification of key gaps in knowledge where there is a need to strengthen and/or scale-up evidence generation (new primary research) including proposed framing of suitable approaches, or additional evidence synthesis activities related to CP.
• Support national research agenda – provide consistent technical support to various aspects of development of national research agenda underway by the government of Malawi. Produce an initial version of the draft evidence map to support the national research agenda: which includes a descriptive analysis of the evidence gap map and provides recommendations for future research priorities.
• Production of systematic reviews: Throughout the contract period, the consultant will provide systematic reviews, analytical reports and technical insights based on various types of evidence being collected by the office. For each request of such review, accompanying analysis will provide an intuitive visual overview of the distribution of evidence (both on quality or lack thereof) on the effectiveness of interventions in key outcome areas AND draw conclusions from that learning to be used by the office in any short or long term programming support for embedding evidence in planning and monitoring and implementation of programmes.
• Ensure maximum coherence between interventions and key goals and results in the current CPD as well as identify gaps and support to solidify the basis for a stronger Research Agenda within UNICEF Malawi in the next CPD based on the work being achieved currently.

The key audience for the assignment is UNICEF’s REKM section in collaboration with programme sections and other key stakeholders (such as the National Planning Commission). It will provide an overview of evidence and gaps for all future research commissioned under the Malawi and UNICEF Research agendas. It will be made openly accessible on the UNICEF Malawi website.

Ethical considerations

The consultant should act with integrity and respect for all stakeholders in line with UNICEF’s updated procedure on ethical standards in research, evaluation, data collection and analysis to meet the minimum and binding standards for ethical evidence generation and analysis processes. The 5 guiding principles of respect, beneficence, justice, integrity and accountability will be used to ensure ethical safety during the data collection process:

• protection of, and respect for, human and child rights within all research, evaluation and data collection processes undertaken or commissioned by UNICEF
• ensuring informed consent by all participants
• ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of subjects
• effective processes and accountability for ethical oversight of these processes

Throughout the process, the consultant should be sensitive to beliefs, manners and customs and act with integrity and honesty in their relationships with all stakeholders and do no harm. The consultant should identify any potential ethical issues and approaches in the Inception Report.

Data protection

All personal data should be accessible to the consultant, but no one else. The consultant needs to use secure systems (a) to ensure that no one else can access their data via the shared staff drives, and (b) to ensure secure data transfer between institutions. Cloud-based storage with limited sharing rights could be considered in this instance. Different personal data files need to be link-able, they need to be held separately so that they can only be linked purposely, by researchers who are authorized to do so. There is also a need to ensure that data cannot be removed from secure systems in ways that might compromise data security.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

Academic Requirements:

• Master’s degree in the social sciences, public policy, evidence synthesis, research methods, impact evaluation or another technical field relevant to this consultancy

Professional Experience Requirements:

• 8-10 years of experience conducting evidence analysis work such as assessments, evaluations, synthesis, including Systematic Reviews or comparable products such as Rapid Evidence Assessments, Rapid Reviews, and Evidence Gap Maps. Experience with a range of synthesis approaches.
• Expertise in social research methods, including qualitative, quantitative experimental or quasi-experimental methods and study design
• Experience in the thematic or descriptive analysis of quantitative and qualitative data.
• Demonstrable experience of working with UNICEF
• Demonstrable experience in planning, reviewing and evaluations of UN agencies or joint UN programmes
• Access to and experience of using quantitative, and qualitative analysis software.

Other Requirements:

• Demonstrated ability to organize own work, and work according to deadlines
• Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment with staff with different experience and skills and with staff in different geographic locations
• A strong ability to manage, negotiate and collaborate with external and internal experts
• Demonstrated ability to set high standards for quality of work and consistently achieve project goals
• Solid writing, analytical, problem solving, writing and presentation skills particularly in the context of international work settings
• Fluency in English

Please refer to the attached full Terms of Reference Terms of Reference REKM Evidence Synthesis.pdf for more details on the consultancy and requirements.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA).

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

HOW TO APPLY...

Interested consultants should provide the following:

1. Curriculum Vitae
2. Brief technical proposal (no longer than five pages) demonstrating the consultant’s understanding of the assignment and approach/methodology to the assignment
3. Financial proposal including a breakdown of their all-inclusive fees (including professional fees, travel, living cost, visa and other costs). Financial Proposal for Consultancy.xlsx Complete the attached form.
4. References details

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. The candidate may also be subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid).