Enhancing Quality of Research 4 Development:
Initial Ideas for Design and Implementation of
the Integrated Core Projects
Jane Poole, Alice Njehu
Livestock CRP Priority Countries Planning Meeting
26 – 27 March 2019
Nairobi, Kenya

What is ‘Research Quality’ for our Country
Implementation Plans and Core Projects 2019 - 2021
• Relevance - Our ToC & testing of its assumptions, problem identification, identification of
interventions (best-bet)
• Scientific Credibility - Our research questions and methods, including design, protocols,
tools and analyses, outputs – for different stakeholders, peer-reviewed, FAIR
• Legitimacy - Our compliance with ethical standards and activities with appropriate partners
• Effectiveness - Our ex-post impact assessment, reporting of CGIAR common indicators,
showing progress towards outcomes in ToC and how we enable the translation of knowledge
to use, including capacity development
* Both the L&F CCEE Evaluation of VC approach (Doyle Baker et al) and the IEE (McLeod et al)
emphasized that although there is high quality research being under-taken we need to maintain
high attention to the design of field projects, capitalize on opportunities for cross-
discipline/cross-location activities and invest more in quantitative approaches to both planning
and analysis of research

QoR4D opportunities of Core Projects 2019 - 2021
• Within Country:
– Co-piloting of interventions (‘package’)
– Co-location for piloting (site selection)
– Co-ordinated design approach
• Across Countries:
– Common indicators (+ data collection tools)
– Cross-country standards (e.g. design protocol)
– Cross-country analysis & learning
We have this opportunity for coordinated priority country
planning, to discuss common standards and approaches. Increases
our opportunities for cross-flagship/country analysis, synthesis
and learning.

Our Country ‘Core Project’ = ‘Research activity’?
• When we design and implement research activities we go through similar
processes (protocol elements):
– What is the problem / background / justification – may include literature
reviews
– What are our aims and objectives / research questions / hypotheses
– What is our approach going to be to answer these? – design,
methodologies, target population, study area, sampling, tools
– How will we conduct the research (implementation plan) – data
management plan, training (data collection / field staff), analysis plan
– Logistics / budget
– Research compliance / Ethics
• These elements may be presented informally in research proposals (detail
depends on the donor) and/or in formal project or activity-level protocols
(when research compliance or other standards require it – like registering
RCT protocols)

What are the most important elements to discuss
here*
• What is the problem / background / justification
– In what context are we working? What is the current environment
(political, environmental, value-chain) for the focus species?
Situational Analyses (L&F and updated versions)*
– How are we identifying the intervention(s) and cross-cutting
elements to include? Best-bet Protocol from Livestock & Fish*
*what standard tools do we have to support these decisions – that
could be applied across contexts (countries / flagships / interventions)

What are the most important elements to discuss
here*
• What are our aims and objectives / research questions /
hypotheses
– What changes (outcomes and impact) do we observe and how do we
attribute / show contribution of the CRP? (Impact Assessment)
– Does our ToC / IP capture the change pathway to achieve these
changes (learning for scaling-up and out)? (Contribution Analysis)
– Do(es) the intervention(s) work? yes / no (we’ve already done this?
Maybe not for combination of interventions – ‘package’)

What are the most important elements to discuss
here*
• What is our approach going to be to answer these? – Our
DESIGN approach derives from the aims and objectives:
– (quasi)experimental: with / without intervention(s)
– observational: testing the assumption of the ToC/IP to show the
validity of the pathway
*what standard tools do we have to support these decisions – that
could be applied across contexts (countries / flagships / interventions):
Generic Protocol Template for the activity;
Protocol for testing and evaluating innovations (LLAFS) - adjusted for
intervention testing and/or Bao tool?

Additional protocol elements – aligned to Objectives
and Design Approach (1 of 2)
• What is our approach going to be to answer these?
– Methodologies: integrating mixed-methodologies at different levels
(e.g. VC assessment, community-level FGDs, household surveys)
– Target population & Study Area: current areas of focus (L&F sites +
current bilaterals), do we work in new areas only, new + old, old
only? Depends also on the Design above. Site selection protocol*?
– Sampling: sampling frame? Measuring what indicators?, sample size
justification for specific outcome / impact indicators*, sampling
protocol*?
– Tools: VC Toolkit version 2 (national to community level)*, Rhomis
(household level)*, others?
*what standard tools do we have to support these decisions – that
could be applied across contexts (countries / flagships / interventions)?

Additional protocol elements – aligned to Objectives
and Design Approach (2 of 2)
• How will we conduct the research (implementation plan) –
– data management plan (DMP)*
– training (data collection / field staff) – examples in VC toolkit*
– analysis plan
• Logistics / budget
• Research compliance / Ethics
– ILRI Research compliance platform for human, animal and biosafety
ethics
– ICARDA, SLU, CIAT?
*what standard tools do we have to support these decisions – that could be
applied across contexts (countries / flagships / interventions)?

CGIAR Research Program on Livestock
livestock.cgiar.org
The CGIAR Research Program on Livestock aims to increase the productivity and profitability of livestock agri-food
systems in sustainable ways, making meat, milk and eggs more available and affordable across the developing world.
This presentation is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.
The program thanks all donors and organizations which globally support its work through their contributions to the
CGIAR system