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 -- NATIONAL AUDIENCE SURVEYS IN ETHIOPIA AND ERITREA POC Technical point Contact: William Bell, FAX: (202)401-1494, Contracting Officer: Lorraine Mullen (202)260-2933 B -- THIS A REQUEST FOR QUOTATION (RFQ) subject to availability of funds. The International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), Contracts and Procurement Division is seeking quotations for National audience surveys in Ethiopia and Eritrea. To fulfill this requirement, the contractor shall obtain (1) data on the size, composition, and media habits of the audience to Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts in Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Amharic, Tigrigna, Oromiffa, and English languages; (2) qualitative evaluations, by radio listeners in Ethiopia and Eritrea, of VOA's broadcasts in the above-mentioned languages. Requirements for each of these research categories are laid out separately below. 1) Audience data shall be obtained through national surveys covering both countries that are 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 regularlistening audience for other international and domestic broadcasters, and general patterns of media use. 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 national populations of Ethiopia and Eritrea. For each of these countries, VOA will require an achieved sample of at least 1,000 adults, 15 years and older, representative by nationality, sex, region, age, and education of the adult population (urban and rural). In the case of Ethiopia, contractors are requested to provide bids for samples of both 1,000 and 1,500. For the quantitative portion of this requirement, the contractor shall 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 weighting the data, if necessary; preparing cross-tabulations in data books and fina l reports on diskettes and communicating all necessary 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 Amharic, Oromiffa, and Tigrigna. 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 are to be delivered to VOA within 2 weeks of com pletion 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. 2) Qualitative evlauations of VOA's broadcasts shall be obtained through the use of focus groups in each country. It is anticipated that a total of 6 focus groups in Ethiopia and 2 focus groups in Eritrea will be required. All groups should include 9 -- 10 members, and should include both male and female participants. Each group should be led by a native speaker of the VOA broadcast language under discussion. Participants should have at least a secondary level education. Preferred distribution of the foc us groups is as follows: Ethiopia: One group in Addis Ababa composed of regular listeners to VOA's Amharic service, regardless of ethnic background. Second group in Addis Ababa composed of non-listeners to VOA, who are prepared to listen to and comment on VOA's Amharic-language broadcasts. Third group in Addis Ababa to focus on VOA's programming in the Oromiffa language. This would be composed of a mix of regular listeners and non-listeners to VOA's Oromiffa- language service, all of whom are fluent Oromiffa speakers. Fourth group in Addis Ababa to focus on VOA's programming in the Tigrigna language, composed of a mix of regular listeners and non-listeners to VOA's Tigrigna language service, all of whom are fluent Tigrigna speakers. Fifth group in a provincial city in a primarily Oromo region of the country, composed of native Oromiffa speakers, and mixing regular listeners to VOA's Oromiffa service and non- listeners. Sixth group in a provincial city in a primarily Tigrigna- speaking region fo the country, composed of native Tigrigna speakers, and mixing regular listeners to VOA's Oromiffa service and non-listeners. Eritrea: One group composed of regular listeners to VOA's Tigrigna language service. One group composed of non-listeners to VOA's Tigrigna language service. VOA will supply a discussion guide for the focus groups, which the contractor will be responsible for translating into each of the three languages of interest to VOA. The contractor may use the national surveys as a means of recruiting focus group participants. The contractor will be responsible for: 1) Reviewing the discussion guide and making suggestions for changes due to any local cultural or political sensitivities. 2) Translating and printing the discussion guides and providing copies of translations to VOA for approval. 3) Identifying focus group participants in line with the criteria laid out above. 4) Conducting focus groups with the minimum number of participants. 5) Providing an audio tape of the each focus group discussion. 6) Providing an English transcript of each focus group discussion. 7) Providing a summary and analysis of the groups' analyses of the programming reviewed. 8) Report shall be submitted in English, with 2 hard copies. 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.) VOA reserves the right to reduce the scope of this project if it cannot be carried out in its entirety within existing budgetary parameters. 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 submit proposals within 15 days of the publication of this notice and shall reference this RFQ #B/PA-97-11. 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 Lorraine Mullen, Contracting Officer, at (202 ) 205-1921. The price quote must be on a separate page fromthe proposal. (0078)

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