Consultant firm to conduct a household survey of general public knowledge of everyday actions that are inadvertently linked to financing terrorism At American Bar Association

Raising Public Awareness on Countering the Financing of Terrorism Program

Terms of Reference for a consultant firm to conduct a household survey of general public knowledge of everyday actions that are inadvertently linked to financing terrorism

Background

The American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) was established in 1990 as a public service project of the American Bar Association to promote the rule of law around the world. Since then, ABA ROLI has implemented legal reform programs in more than 100 countries and has sought to strengthen legal institutions, support legal professionals, foster respect for human rights, and advance public understanding of the law and citizens’ rights. In collaboration with government agencies, the judiciary, lawyers, bar associations, legislatures, and civil society, ABA ROLI designs programs that are responsive to local needs and that prioritize sustainable solutions to pressing rule of law challenges.

Project Background

The Raising Public Awareness on Countering the Financing of Terrorism in South America Program will improve the capacity of criminal justice sectors and financial institutions in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay to promote public awareness about the risks and realities of terrorism financing in the Tri-Border Area and demonstrate how everyday activities may unwittingly contribute to related crimes.

Working closely with the communication departments of the criminal sector and financial institutions, as well as central and local government agencies, ABA ROLI aims to raise public awareness of countering financial terrorism (CFT) to help reduce unwitting involvement in these crimes.

Scope of Work

The Survey has five major components as outlined below and detailed in the subsequent sections.

1. Design and implement one baseline household survey and endline household survey: The consultant will design and administer two household surveys in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, targeted towards households and business owners, and will provide ABA ROLI Paraguay access to the questionnaire and the data collected. The firm will conduct the surveys through in-person interviews and will collect secondary / administrative data, as needed, for the analysis and the sampling phase. The firm shall also develop a sampling frame, select respondents from across Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, hire and train the survey team, pre-test the questionnaire and ensure adaptation to local conditions, and implement the survey. ABA ROLI Paraguay will provide oversight for the consultant tasks. The consulting firm will ensure that data protection is safeguarded.

2. Design and implement one baseline survey and one endline survey for a smaller sample of Paraguayan, Brazilian and Argentinian shoppers from outside Ciudad del Este who are shopping at local businesses: The consultant will design and administer the surveys through an online platform and will collect secondary / administrative data, as needed. The consultant firm shall also develop a sampling frame and select respondents, targeting people who shop in Ciudad del Este but live in Puerto Iguazu, Foz do Iguazu, or Asuncion.

3. Clean data and archive them in a suitable format: The firm shall enter and clean data into a database that is accessible to ABA ROLI. The final data, including raw and clean data sets, shall be delivered in a final format to be determined. The consultant shall produce their database with GPS coordinates and start and end time stamps of the observations. The collection of data shall be through a reliable electronic device recording both the GPS coordinates and the timestamp of the sample.

4. Submit the final survey completion report: The consulting firm shall carry out a basic descriptive analysis of the clean dataset. The report shall include, among others, a detailed description of all pre-survey and survey activities including issues that arose during the survey, and provide the means used to resolve them in addition to data findings.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

The consulting firm shall be responsible for delivering high-quality data within a timeframe defined in this TOR (Terms of Reference), under the constant supervision of the Paraguay ABA ROLI office. Specifically, the hired consulting firm shall be responsible for the following activities and tasks:

1. Design and implementation of baseline and endline surveys: This includes all the pre-survey activities, starting from sample design to finalizing / customizing questionnaires, and administering the surveys. The activities under this task are described here.

a. Questionnaire development and revision:

The consulting firm will design the questionnaires to focus on behavior that unwittingly contributes to the financing of terrorism or money laundering. The firm will be responsible for ensuring that the questions are vetted with the ABA ROLI Paraguay office.

The consulting firm shall review the questionnaires and confirm the wording, ordering, skip patterns, and placement of questions, where necessary, to ensure objectivity and accuracy. Additionally, the firm shall collect requisite background information to inform data collection activities, which can include working closely with the government stats offices as needed.

The consulting firm shall be responsible for the translation of the questionnaires into the local language(s). The translation shall be evaluated through back-translation of the target text into the source language to compare the accuracy of the two versions. The translated questionnaire and the back-translation should be made available to the ABA ROLI Paraguay office.

b. Estimate the sample size, design the sample, and conduct household listing:

The sample selection for the household survey should be based on a 2-stage stratification strategy, and be representative of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, and its urban areas. The total sample size for the household survey will be determined by the consultancy firm. This sample size may change based on more information on the country’s context and / or conditions on the ground. The methodology for the sampling and the determination of the ultimate sample size will be closely coordinated with the ABA ROLI Paraguay.

Access to the sampling frame: The consulting firm shall use the most recent population and housing census as the sample frame for the first sampling stage. The technical proposal shall describe in detail how the consultant will obtain access to the sampling frame or develop their own sampling frame.

Household listing activity: The firm will conduct the ‘household listing’ activity. As part of this activity, enumerators will visit and list households within the boundaries of Ciudad del Este to construct a sampling frame for the households. During the listing activity, enumerators will capture demographic information. Enumerators should receive proper training from the consulting firm for the implementation of this activity. Once the list of households is completed, a representative number of households will be selected. The consulting firm is required to submit a detailed description of the sampling methodology, including sample size calculation and stratification strategy for review and approval prior to field implementation.

C. Recruit and train enumerators and field supervisors:

Data collection team

i. The consulting firm shall be responsible for hiring and training enumerators, field supervisors, editors, and data managers. Enumerators shall be able to interact with all classes of people, be skilled at building rapport with respondents, and be experienced in dealing with numbers.

ii. Field supervisors should have at least a bachelor’s level of education / equivalent / experience and significant experience in survey work and be available for the entire survey period. Field supervisors should have 2-3 years of experience in conducting or managing household surveys. The supervisor is responsible for collecting community-level data and arranging appointments with respondent households. The field supervisor will also perform quality controls on the information collected by his / her team, including randomly attending some interviews, and randomly re-interviewing 10-15% of households on specific modules or overall questionnaires.

iii. The firm will determine the composition of the interview team.

a. Training

The survey firm shall prepare the training agenda and submit it to the ABA ROLI Paraguay team for review. Enumerators and supervisors should be trained for at least 2 days including 1 day of pre-testing and feedback sessions for household and community / facility surveys, and longer if needed. Relevant stakeholders may be invited to the training venue. Specific training to enhance the understanding of enumerators and field supervisors on the CFT and AML (Anti Money Laundering) sector may be required (provided by the ABA Paraguay Office), in addition to the introduction to the survey instrument and the practice of tablet for data entry. Programming for the survey shall be completed prior to the training session and be available for enumerators to learn and practice with the tablets during the training and pre-testing phases.

i. The consulting firm shall develop an instruction manual (enumerator’s guide) for the training, which will cover a detailed explanation of all questions, how to articulate them in an understandable way, how to approach the respondents, probing techniques, picture information to improve enumerators’ understanding on the questions, and so on. Enumerator’s manuals should also include information on key concepts & products (including photos) useful to properly conduct the interviews. The instruction manual shall be developed before the start of the training and revised during the training and pretesting as needed.

b. Pre-test / pilot the questionnaires:

i. Pretesting will ensure that the questions are relevant, well-sequenced, non-ambiguous, and easy to understand, the codes used for close-ended questions are relevant, and the duration of the interviews is within reasonable limits of what is expected.

ii. The consulting firm shall be responsible for conducting the pretesting of the questionnaires. Pretesting should be conducted for households in urban communities, including testing of the household questionnaire (the number will be determined after sampling) prior to finalizing the questionnaires. The stratification strategy should also be considered in the pilot survey.

iii. After the pretest, a feedback session will be arranged and the questionnaires will be checked for errors detected and issues raised during pretesting, and then again, the questionnaires will be revised. The actual survey work cannot commence until the ABA Paraguay office provides clearance on the final version of the questionnaires.

c. Provide logistical and other support to enumerators and supervisors:

i. The field enumerators and supervisors will require logistical support and subsistence during the survey work. The support and relevant expenses (for transport, per-diem, etc.) must be borne by the consulting firm in a manner consistent with the norm of similar surveys in the country.

ii. The firm is also responsible for obtaining the necessary permits or clearance for the survey implementation, from relevant authorities.

d. Carry out the surveys:

i. The household / business and survey interviews shall be conducted during a single visit. In exceptional cases (for example, if the respondent does not have time to continue or is not at home) it may be necessary to return to a household or community facility on more than one occasion, but this should not be the norm. It is expected that the average length of administering the household questionnaire will be around 15 minutes.

ii. For the household survey, the questionnaire would preferably be administered to the household head or the head’s spouse depending on the module of the questionnaire or the business owner.

The firm should provide a detailed field procedure plan:

· Calendar of activities, including the expected time each team will spend in each EA;

· Provisions for ensuring data quality, including procedures for addressing data inconsistencies / misreporting when identified;

· Management of information / reporting tools to track the progress of survey implementation including the number of interviews conducted;

· Supervision and spot-check plans to ensure adherence to data collection protocols and confirm the quality of data collection and entry; and

· The consulting firm must adhere as closely to the plan as conditions allow during survey implementation. As field conditions dictate significant changes to these plans, the field supervisors must inform the firm’s management which should then inform the ABA ROLI Paraguay office to discuss and evaluate the situation as early as possible.

e. The duties of the enumerators shall be:

· All issues should be rectified in the field before the teams move on to the next EA;

· Visit the selected households, community leaders and [add as needed] and ensure their participation;

· Conduct face-to-face interviews with the selected respondents, not without first obtaining their permission;

· Record and code the answers accurately;

· Ensure completeness and accuracy of the answers and perform accuracy checks on the questionnaires whenever applicable (for tablet-based surveys many of these will be done automatically);

· Take note of any values for categorical variables that are not already defined in the questionnaire;

· Deliver completed questionnaires to supervisors (for paper-based interviews) or transmit them to the central server over the internet (tablet-based interviews); and

· Safeguard the confidentiality and privacy of the collected information.

f. The duties of the supervisors will be:

· Explain clearly to each enumerator his / her duties and responsibilities;

· Provide all logistical support and materials to field enumerators;

· Supervise all activities of the enumerators during the data collection process through random spot checks;

· Ensure that the interviewers survey the households chosen for the sample without substitution;

· Assess the quality of the work of the enumerators and the quality of the data from each completed questionnaire;

· Provide feedback to enumerators on quality assurance;

· Liaise and report activities to the survey coordinator; and

· Check completed questionnaires and approved them for data entry.

2. Cleaning and archiving data in a suitable form:

After completion of the survey, the firm shall be responsible for data entry and cleaning as mentioned in the Scope of Work. For tablet-based surveys, data entry will be almost automatic, as it only involves the immediate transmission of data from tablets to a central web server, which then will be converted into a usable format using statistical software, such as Stata, SPSS, or excel. The survey program script should check the consistency and quality of data immediately when enumerators enter the values, but the firm shall be responsible for ensuring the quality of data collected. At the end of the data cleaning, the consulting firm shall deliver the raw data as well as the cleaned one to the ABA ROLI Paraguay office in an online format, with all variables labeled and adequately documented in English. The survey forms shall record the GPS coordinates of the households and communities surveyed. The Consultant shall deliver the following items to the ABA ROLI Paraguay office:

• The original (raw) as well as clean data with complete labelling for variable names and value options in English;

• All related documentation including the complete set of questionnaires in English and Spanish; possible value (and explanation) of all categorical variables; other values that enumerators record and,

• Photos taken (or drawings made) during the interviews; and

• Sample weights including first-stage sample weight, second-stage sample weight, and final sample weight. All of the documentation and formula related to each stage of sampling for the calculation of the first / second / and final sample weight.

3. Submit the final Country Diagnostic Report

The Consultants shall carry out the data cleaning as well as the basic data analysis; and submit the final Country Diagnostic Report. Data tabulation plans and text templates may be formulated with the ABA ROLI Paraguay office to include specifications for reporting means, standard deviations, and minimum and maximum values of major variables in each section. Findings shall be included in the survey completion report. The report shall include, among others, a detailed description of all survey preparation and implementation phases, including issues that arose during the survey, and provide the means used to resolve them; in addition to the findings from data analysis. The Consultant shall submit a draft report to the ABA ROLI Paraguay office and shall revise it incorporating the comments from the ABA ROLI Paraguay office. The Consultant is responsible for the overall quality of the report. The final report shall be submitted in English.

Deliverables and payment schedule

Following are the deliverables and tentative schedule for submission. They may be revised based on the load of the survey activities after the consulting firm is on board.

Table 1: Deliverables and submission schedule

• Workplan
  • Submission: Two weeks after the signing of the contract.
• Finalized questionnaire, pre-testing result, and training evaluation report including the enumerators testing results
  • Submission: Five weeks after the signing of the contract.
• Clean and raw data after completion of the baseline fieldwork.
• Baseline survey completion report draft.
• Clean and raw data after completion of the endline fieldwork.

Qualifications

The consulting company should have an appropriate mix of experience and expertise. Some of the key positions are indicated below.

Essential team members of consulting firm:

Team members, Qualifications, and Years of Experience

• Project Manager/Team Leader
• • Masters of higher – 10-15 in managing surveys teams.
• Subject Matter Expert
• • Masters or higher – 10-15 in similar works.
• Firm Experience
  • 10-15 in conducting Surveys.
• Survey coordinator
  • At least BS or equivalent
  • 5
• Programmer
  • At least BS or equivalent
  • 5
• Translator
  • At least BS or equivalent
  • 5

Selection criteria

The selection of the consultancy firm will be based on the following criteria (weights in parenthesis):

Criteria Weight

• Adequacy of methodology and proposed work plan – 35%
• Experience in survey work, questionnaire, and sample design – 30%
• Qualifications and competency of the key staff (Statistician, survey coordinator, enumerators, etc.) – 35%

After closing the evaluation of the technical proposals, the financial proposals will be evaluated. The financial proposals will have a 20% weight in the final decision.