Call for Field Researchers in 7 African Countries

Field Researchers will conduct desk research, expert interviews and face-to-face interviews with civil society representatives in their countries.  Field researchers will need to be able to work independently, identify and connect with busy people, work online for training, meetings and data management, and to pay careful attention to detail while meeting deadlines.

Civil society assessments will require between 5 and 15 days of work scattered across 6 weeks, and will include:

• Two online training sessions
• Desk research to collect contextual data
• Face to face assessments of 3-15 organizations or social movements, depending on the country. Each assessment interview must be arranged and executed by the field researcher, and is expected to take approximately 3 hours.
• Entering of all data directly into a web-based data collection platform

Contracts and Payment

Field researchers will paid an international rate of $250-300 per day. Assessments and data input will require 1 day of work per organization. Time spent training and travelling will not be compensated. Field researchers will be hired directly by the engine room and report to the project manager. Field researchers will be paid within 1 week of the final data upload (deadline for upload July 21).

This is the first of many assessment rounds to be conducted in most of these countries.  Field researchers who enjoy the work and do it well will be asked to contribute to subsequent assessments.

Skills and Qualifications

Required

• Attention to detail and experience conducting desk research, especially in accessing public data sets and finding hard-to-find information and statistics
• Experience conducting interviews
• Excellent communication skills in english and local languages
• Stellar contact management and scheduling abilities (including the resolve/flexibility to successfully schedule interviews with busy organizations)
• Ability to access a reliable internet connection for meetings with project staff and for data upload

Assets

• Deep knowledge of local civil society organizations (familiarity with local organizations and the challenges they face, understanding of how civil society interacts with government)
• Knowledge of civil society uses technology (including an understanding of national ICT infrastructure)
• Experience conducting research or cooperating in international research projects
• Access to a smart phone for other device for recording interviews
• Access to a laptop for use during interviews

More about TechScape

TechScape is a global research project, leveraging multiple partnerships to gather empirical data on how civil society uses, anticipates and adopts technology. Over a two year period, TechScape will draw empirical data from a sample of 2-4,000 civil society organizations, distributed multiple dependent and independent variables. Learn more here.

Interested?

Send a copy of your CV and an email telling us why you are interested totechscape@theengineroom.org with “Field Research Application” and the target country in the subject line.