May-11-2008   

Operations Research Proposal Development Workshop

May 1 to 12, 2006
Rockville, Maryland

Training Report

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A workshop for PVO field staff on the preparation and writing of operations research proposals was conducted in Rockville Maryland between May 1st and 12th 2006. The workshop was sponsored by the USAID Office of Population and Reproductive Health PVO/NGO Flexible Fund in collaboration with the Population Council, the CORE Group and the Child Survival Technical Support Program (CSTS+). The Population Council staff led the training with support from the other agencies. Headquarters and field staff teams from eight agencies in nine countries in Africa and Asia participated in the training (see attachments for participant list). Four of the participating teams were Flexible Fund grantees, the rest were CSHGP Child Survival Project grantees or interested CORE members. There were a total of 21 participants from the eight agencies.

Operations Research (OR) has been used to test community based service delivery strategies for over thirty years. It has been used to demonstrate the effectiveness and acceptability of community based distribution of contraceptives, oral rehydration therapy, micro-nutrient distribution and other interventions. Operations Research is an important tool to help project managers develop and test innovative solutions to ensure that their project's community-based service delivery approach is effective.

The workshop objectives were to assure that by the end of the workshop participants will have:

  1. defined what operations research is and when it is appropriate to conduct it;
  2. identified a problem associated with their project that can be addressed through operations research and for which a potential solution will also be feasible to implement;
  3. drafted a protocol for an operations research study that they plan to implement.
Prior to the workshop, the participants were asked to define and provide information about the particular operations research problem they were going to address and develop in their proposals during the workshop. Staff from the Population Council, the other sponsoring organizations and the consultant followed up with participants regarding their problem statements in preparation for the workshop. Once the workshop began, participants were introduced to operations research through such sessions as: What operations research is and how it differs from other research, the Manager's role in OR; Problem Identification and solution generation; demonstrating causality; experimental and quasi-experimental research designs; research ethics; cost analysis; cost-effectiveness analysis, preparation of research budgets, dissemination and utilization of research results (see agenda for more complete information). Between sessions, time was allotted for participants to work on the development of their proposals with support from workshop facilitators. The draft proposals and research protocols were presented and critiqued at the end of the workshop.

The participants ranked the workshop as a whole as excellent, giving it a score of 9 or 10 out of 10 points. Most participants also ranked course content, quality of instruction, group work and exercises, and achievement of workshop objectives as a 9 or 10 out of 10 points.

Some additional comments regarding where participants would like more time and other topics for future workshops were: more time on operations research designs and critiquing case analysis (several requests for this); more on costing and cost-effectiveness analysis with more exercises (several requests); more practical rule-of-thumb statistical considerations for program design (several); scaling up results of OR projects; establishing how program results will be utilized early in the process; a session on the donor environment and how to approach them; more explanation about how operations research differs from other research approaches; who to get informed consent from and how to approach them; use of more program examples (instead of clinical examples) in the teaching sessions.

In general, participants stated that they would definitely apply what they had learned from the workshop in their projects at home. They also said they would recommend the course to others. Many stated that they liked the practical examples and exercises that were used and they thought it was helpful that they had time to work on their proposals with mentors.

A testament to the participant's satisfaction with the workshop is the fact that they all came to the workshop every day on time and stayed the whole day. This was true despite the fact that most of the participants had to travel by car or metro from various hotels in Rockville or Silver Spring.

For monitoring purposes, evaluations were conducted at the end of each day. These were then reviewed and discussed by the workshop team. The status of each of the individual proposals was discussed and mentors were asked to pay attention to programs needing additional assistance. The following day in response to evaluation comments, course facilitators clarified questions about the previous day's instruction and made requested logistics adjustments.

Powerpoint Presentations:

Handouts:

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