USAID LEES Live Sessions with Local Researchers in Ghana

The USAID Local Evaluation and Evidence Support (LEES) effort, implemented by LINC with The Cloudburst Group and the University of Pennsylvania’s PDRI-DevLab@Penn is designed to identify networks of host-country research and evaluation entities that USAID, other international organizations, and local governments can engage for future evaluation and learning activities. Through training, peer connections, and organizational strengthening, LEES aims to strengthen technical and organizational capacity to independently conduct future evaluations and learning activities for USAID-funded programs.?

LEES recently conducted live virtual training sessions for local researchers in Ghana on advanced research and evaluation topics. Since most of the LEES content is available asynchronously, these events were a welcome opportunity for participants to engage in real-time with their peers and with the LEES evaluation experts.?

In the first week of December, three live training sessions on fundamental research and evaluation topics were held? for local researchers in Ghana:?

• “Qualitative Coding,” a virtual live session led by Cloudburst’s Noelle Wyman-Roth, reviewed different approaches to analyzing interview and/or focus group data via qualitative coding and developing codebooks. Using an illustrative data set and sample model, Wyman-Roth gave participants the opportunity to work dynamically with a mock data set to apply new skills learned in analysis of qualitative data. Wyman-Roth closed out the session by presenting different options for qualitative data analysis software to participants, including tutorials of Dedoose, a qualitative data analysis application.?

• The “R Coding” live session, led by the University of Pennsylvania’s DevLab’s Dr. Jeremy Springman, provided foundational training in the basics of coding in R, a programming language designed for data science and statistics. Topics included loading packages; creating objects, vectors, and dataframes; using tidyverse to clean data; developing data visualizations with ggplot; and demonstrating the possibilities of using R for analysis. For participants who arrived with little to no experience, Dr. Springman focused on presenting the building blocks of R for beginners with demonstrations to provide an overview of possible applications of the software so that everyone was able to increase their skills in data science and statistical analysis
• “Mixed Methods Sampling” was jointly led by Wyman-Roth and Springman to demonstrate how qualitative and quantitative sampling methods can complement one another to strengthen data that are collected in evaluation and learning activities. The participants used a sampling design framework with guiding questions to work through case study questions, including considering the benefits and tradeoffs of the chosen approach and how mixed methods can help obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the target population.?

By participating in these advanced training sessions, the local Ghanaian research organizations gained new skills and capabilities on their journey to independently conduct USAID-funded research and evaluations in the future. With buy-in support from other USAID missions, LEES will look to replicate this local research and evaluation capacity-building model in other countries in future years.?

To learn more about Cloudburst’s global development work, please email [email protected].??

To engage with the LEES network visit: https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/usaid-local-evaluation-and-evidence-support-activity/posts/?