Less than two weeks to go until the Evaluation! I can’t believe it is so soon. It is going to be an amazing adventure.
As I mentioned last week, we have been working to develop a sampling frame for the Evaluation that is appropriately random and representative of our two sub-locations, and we’re narrowing in on that frame. I feel good about how we’re going about doing it both according to industry standards for randomization, an appropriate sample-size, and the MPAT guidelines.
We also have the MPAT Village and Household surveys translated into KiKurian and KiSwahili. This was a big endeavor that I mentioned last week, and it’s gone pretty well, I think.
Now our main focus of effort is nailing down a lot of the details of the first two weeks during which the Evaluation will occur. During this time we will conduct MPAT training according to the MPAT User Guide for enumerators and enumerator supervisors. We also expect to select the people who will fill those two particular roles for this Evaluation during said training. It will be both a training and a hiring period.
Next, we will conduct training on quality control and data entry and simultaneously select the folks who will be conducting and supervising data entry for us. Again, training and hiring.
The final step of the first two weeks of the Evaluation will be a pilot of the survey in a few households in the community. This will be a very important and interesting step, and we will surely learn a great deal during it. First of all, we will learn just a bit about how the MPAT survey will be received in our community. This is the first time the tool will have been used in Kenya, so it is likely that there will be some cultural reactions to it that are impossible to anticipate. Additionally, we might learn a bit about just how wonderful the translations of the survey we have done really are through this pilot. There is more that I cannot even anticipate that we will learn, but the last thing that I do anticipate is this: we are working now to design a few additional program-related questions that we will ask as addendums to the MPAT Household Survey. We will be testing these questions out for the first time during this pilot, and we will probably end up scrapping a question or two, editing a question or two, and I hope actually seeing one or two succeed as good questions. Much to learn from this pilot!
Finally, I mentioned in last week’s post that I had some news about who would next be serving us as an M&E Fellow. I am pleased to announce that David Brown, our dear Janine Brown’s husband, will be filling that role for the next Foundation Team! This is exciting news for the Nuru family, and you will hear more from him in the future.