Providing Research Methods Support to the Markets Theme Department of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)

The dissertation describes the main activities carried out during the attachment at the International livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya under the Markets theme group. The activities were carried out under two projects that were ongoing the East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) and the Global Environment Facility in Asia (GEF- Asia). The main objective of the attachment was to support scientists and consolidate skills in the planning, implementation and reporting of effective research for development. A training course on the use of GenStat statistical software in data management and statistical analysis of qualitative survey data was conducted for the GEF-Asia project. Data management involved cleaning, organizing and extracting variables for the baseline household survey data using the GenStat statistical package. The main activity in the EADD project was analysis of the mid-term evaluation (MTE) and baseline household survey data in the three EADD countries (Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda). Data analysis included exploring, summarizing, describing and reporting of the results. Other tasks that were carried out during the attachment included assisting in designing of survey instruments and training of field staff in Uganda. The training was on the sampling of the farmers supplying milk to EADD, use of the questionnaire, importance of data quality and collection techniques. The outputs from the different tasks were used to produce ILRI reports to the two projects.