U.S. Information Agency, International Broadcasting Bureau, Office of Personnel and Administration, Contracts and Procurement Division, Room 1645, 330 Independence Ave., S.W., Washington, DC 20547

B -- URBAN SURVEY IN SIERRA LEONE POC Technical Point of Contact: William Bell, FAX: (202)401-1494. Contracting Officer: Lesley D. Isaac Jr. (202) 205-5337. B -- THIS A REQUEST FOR QUOTATION (RFQ) subject to the availabilty of funds. The International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), Contracts and Procurement Division is seeking quotations for an Urban survey in Sierra Leone, to cover cities of Freetown and Bo. To fulfill this requirement, the contractor shall obtain data on the size, composition, and media habits of the audience to Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts in Sierra Leone. The work will require survey research that is designed to obtain the most accurate possible information about: the number of regular (i.e. weekly) and occasional listeners to VOA, the demographic characteristics and geographical distribution of the audience, the size of the regular listening audience for other international and domestic broadcasters, general patterns of media use, and opinions on the part of the audience as to the accuracy, reliability, and relevance of the programs of VOA and other broadca sters. VOA will supply a set of questions for an interview of approximately 1 hour consisting of approximately 70 questions, up to 5 of which may be open-ended. The interviewing is to be face-to-face and conducted in the home of the respondent by a trained interviewer. VOA will require demographic information on each respondent, including sex, exact age, nationality, native language, education, type of work, type of settlement, and place of residence. The information cited above should be obtained via a survey of a representative sample of the populations of Freetown and Bo. VOA will require an achieved sample of 800 adults, 15 years and older, representative by nationality, sex, region, age, and education of the adult population of these cities. The contractor will be responsible for the project design, translation, formatting, pretesting and, if necessary, adaptation and printing of VOA supplied questionnaires, conducting the survey sample, training of interviewers, supervision of fieldwork, cleaning and encoding the responses, entering and processing the data, ascertaining the representativeness of the sample and weighing the data, if necessary; preparing cross-tabulations in data books and final reports on diskettes and communicating all necessa ry information and results to VOA in a timely manner. Proposed Time Schedule: Shortly after contract award, the selected offeror will be given an English language questionnaire for translation into Krio, Mende, and other vernacular languages as required to conduct the fieldwork. Following VOA approval of the specific translated questionnaire, pretest should begin immediately. After pretesting, the interviewing should begin within 2-3 weeks following VOA approval of the final questionnaire, with completion within a 2 week period. Marginal frequency results a re to be delivered to VOA within 2 weeks of completion of the fieldwork. Cross tabulations with selected demographic characteristics, files in ASCII containing full questions with the marginals and all raw data (cleaned) on computer diskettes, as well as SPSS if possible, shall be delivered to VOA within 4 weeks of completion of fieldwork. Proposal evaluation and contract selection will be made on the basis of the equally important technical criteria listed below, in addition to total project cost and ability to meet the proposed schedule. a. Past performance and experience of firm with at least 3 references b. Quality of the sampling technique c. Quality of data collection and data-entering procedures The proposal shall include a detailed description of the proposed research methodology, including specific listing of organizations the offeror will use for fieldwork, current information on qualifications of offeror's staff and field staff, training of interviewers, sampling plan and procedures for conducting the above work, including number and type of sampling points and way in which interviews will be allocated to urban and rural areas. Further, the proposal shall include a schedule with a break out sh owing: 1) number of days required for translation, pretest, reporting pretest results, and printing of final questionnaire; 2) duration of fieldwork, 3) time required for entering and cleaning data and preparing marginals, 4) time required for delivering cross tabulations and raw data files on diskettes (2 copies) and cross tabulations in data books (2 printed copies.) Please note that omission of any of the points of information noted herein will weigh against your proposal from being selected for this work. Firms interested in the above are requested to send a proposal within 15 days of the publication of this notice and shall reference this RFQ #B/PA-97-12. Technical questions concerning this requirement may be faxed to: William Bell, Director of Research at (202)401-1494. Proposal and price quotation may be faxed to Lesley D. Isaac Jr., Contracting Officer, at (202) 205-1921. The price quote must be on a separate page from the proposal. (0078)

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