Impact Evaluation Consultants

Consultancy Opportunities:  

MSI is looking to expand our roster of domestic and international impact evaluation consultants to support our growing portfolio of evaluation work. MSI currently manages USAID portfolio-wide evaluation contracts in Kenya, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, as well as a global monitoring and evaluation support contract to assist the State Department, USAID and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.

Experienced evaluation consultants are frequently needed on short notice to provide support to evaluations occurring worldwide. Consultancies range from a few weeks to a few months and occur throughout the year. Specific consultant responsibilities are tailored to assignments.

 

**Please be as specific as possible in your cover letter and/or résumé regarding specific methods of data collection and analysis you have utilized in the past.**

 

Frequent Responsibilities: 

• Help technical teams develop and articulate the theory of change or development hypotheses and critical assumptions on which program/project success depends.

• Identify appropriate performance indicators for tracking results and monitoring critical assumptions and/or preparing comprehensive performance monitoring plans.

• Work with technical teams to define the quality of outcome/impact evidence that will be needed from their programs and defining appropriate longitudinal, quasi-experimental and/or point in time evaluations for integration into comprehensive M&E plans for programs and projects.

• Design/conduct baseline studies, including institutional assessments, large scale surveys, etc.

• Develop/implement quasi-experimental evaluation designs or fully randomized research trials.

• Conduct data quality assessments.

• Conduct statistical analyses using time series and/or program performance data.

• Conduct content/pattern analysis with large sets of qualitative data, e.g., interviews, production/consumption patterns, conflict monitoring indicators, etc., across regions or countries.

• Conduct meta-evaluations/analyses to identify patterns of performance/issues across programs and/or to examine the quality of program/project evaluations.

 

Preferred Experience: 

• Advanced degree, particularly PhD, in International Development, Economics, Political Science, Statistics or related social science field.

• Familiarity and experience with impact evaluation (experimental and quasi-experimental designs) and associated tools (power analysis, propensity score matching, regression discontinuity, etc.). 

• Advanced social science research skills and statistics including strong data visualization skills.

• Evaluation design experience, including the selection of data collection methods on a question-specific basis and development of a detailed data analysis plan. 

• Superior writing ability, including evidence of an ability to structure evaluation reports in a way that logically and transparently lays out empirical findings, conclusions and recommendations in relation to evaluation questions.

• Familiarity with and ability to apply a range of data collection methodologies covered by USAID TIPS. 

• Field experience that includes at least some but not necessarily all of the following:

• o Survey research experience, including development of structured and semi-structured interview and/or observation instruments, by hand and using mid-size survey aids such as EPI Info from CDC; sample size determination for specific confidence levels and confidence intervals; selection and use of other survey data (and other large data set) entry and analysis software (SPSS or alternative).
• o Structured or semi-structured group interviews and/or focus groups, including the creation of written instruments and transcripts for same; content analysis and other techniques for coding and transforming group/open-ended data into analyzed information; qualitative data analysis software (NVIVO or alternative) and/or case study documentation experience; transformation of qualitative data into a quantitative form that can be merged with other quantitative data in a mixed methods analysis.
• o Applied experience with non-experimental theory testing techniques for examining program/project effects (baseline reconstruction, outcome mapping, outcome harvesting, general elimination method (modus operandi), contribution analysis, lagged regressions and/or others).

Only candidates who have been selected for an interview will be contacted. No phone calls, please.

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