MEAL Assessment

There are two components of the assessment weighted 75%/25%. The former is formative assessment so feel free to contact me with queries. The latter is more summative so no help will be given.

Assessment 1.

Write a short report (*not more* than 2800 words (upper limit not a target number), not including supplementary information, if any, clearly delineated) detailing a small interim analytical study on a development project of your own literary invention. You are an analyst within the project team. To constrain your imagination there is a financial upper limit of £4 million pounds available for field methods so the use of unlimited vehicular resources or massive giveaways of wealth etc. is implausible. The £4 million is just a constraint on flamboyant methods, a financial plan is not required. You can create your own data. You don’t have to include a logframe (but it can do no harm) but you should mention and use its components.

The discussion should be limited to methodological issues. You should write the report in a style of an existing report (which should be clearly identified) perhaps one of the ones considered today, and your adherence to that style will contribute (albeit meagrely) to your marks. The report can take a mixed method approach if necessary. An abstract should be provided. The abstract can be technical or non-technical depending on your desired audience (that should be identified in a note at the beginning).

Marks will be given for

adherence to appropriate style,
feasibility/appropriateness of goals/questions,
feasibility/appropriateness of methods with regard to logframe components and the avoidance of the sort of research problems we have discussed over the last few weeks. Failure to recognise some obvious flaw in your methods leading to an alternative explanation for your results will cost you marks,
appropriateness and execution of statistics (mainly the former, this is not a stats module)
appropriateness and execution of the qualitative component,
appropriateness of conclusions given the results (again considering the points in the lectures).
Realistic elements

You will NOT be marked down for any flaws in your methods which are openly considered and our unavoidable (given your potentially small budget). Indeed identifying unavoidable flaws will gain you marks. Not identifying, avoidable flaws will cost you marks. Honesty is the best policy.

For reproducibility purposes please supply your analysis code in the appendix. This does not count against the word limit.

Assessment 2.

Identify the flaws in the report given below. Suggestions should be made for alternative approaches if a negative comment is made. Your total text should not exceed the number of words in the original report! There are AT LEAST 5 flaws and could be a *lot* more.

Raising Adult Literacy Levels in Zimbabwe: Final Report

C.G.M. Paxton, Paxcation Limited, St Andrews, Fife

Introduction

Increasing adult literacy has been shown to be correlated with GDP worldwide (e.g. Burchfield et al. 2002). Just over 1 billion people worldwide cannot read or write, leading not only to limited job opportunities but an inability to undertake every day activities e.g. read labels (e.g. Raynal 1985), machinery instructions, and confirm commercial transactions. Increasing adult literacy is associated with longer term impacts notably an increased likelihood of sending offspring to school. Increasing the pool of literate and numerate people is essential to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

A family’s economic poverty may force the parents to engage their children in the labour market in lieu of schooling. Furthermore, sending children to school may be considered less critical, especially in settings where education appears to have no immediate benefits to parents and encouraging children to begin working could provide immediate economic relief to the family. In some situations, inconvenience or inaccessibility may also deter parents from sending their children to school, leading them to enter the labour force as a result. Putting children to work instead of into school may create a vicious circle: initially, work may adversely affect schooling; later, low or no education may result in continued child labour in the following generation. Poverty may thereby be both a cause and effect of low educational attainment. Low levels of child literacy lead to low levels of adult literacy. Therefore ameliorating adult illiteracy will ultimately lead to ameliorating child illiteracy.

In this programme by Paxcation.org, we instigated a two year adult literacy campaign in South Matebeleland.

Methods

The programme was initiated in 2016 and consisted of Paxcation teachers offering classes in adult literacy for any consenting individuals within the studied communities. Twenty-nine villages in southern Matebeleland were identified as suitable candidates for consideration for this observational study. Adult literacy level of the participants was identified as an impact indicator. In each community class, a focal individual was identified who was repeatedly tested (3 times) for their literacy levels using an identical standardised test (perfected by pilot studies in Fife in 2015) to generate a single variable per test (so 3 per person). This was undertaken over a two week period at the end of the study (2018). Individuals were paid to participate.

In the qualitative component of the analysis, focus groups of volunteers were convened to ascertain individual motivations and histories in achieving low literacy levels.

Progress Evaluation

The literacy campaign was successfully finished as planned.

Quantitative analysis

The ages of the participants varied between 18 and 78 (mean 69). Scores in the literacy test for each village are shown in figure 1. Multiple pairwise ‘t’ tests were used to evaluate the differences across the villages. The mean P value across all the tests was 0.03 showing a very strong overall effect of the literacy programme. Statistical analysis was undertaken in R (R Core Team 2018). The mean scores per village are shown in figure 1.

Figure 1. Relative resultant scores in the literacy programme for each village (labelled 1-27). Every degree represents a literacy score of 3.1.

Qualitative analysis

Focal group analysis of class participants revealed details of why individuals suffered from adult illiteracy. It was caused by negative comments by classmates towards people who progressed in their reading.

Discussion

The mean literacy score of 43 clearly represents an increase over the mean nationwide level of literacy in Zimbabwe (27) suggesting the programme has been a considerable success. There is a strong basis for believing this successful programme should be rolled out over all sub-Saharan Africa. These results are in agreement with studies in South Africa and Botswana.

References

Burchfield, S.; Hua, H.; Baral, D.; Rocha, V. (2002) A Longitudinal Study of the Effect of Integrated Literacy and Basic Education Programs on Women’s Participation in Social and Economic Development in Nepal. Report for the Agency for International Development (IDCA) by World Education Incorporated.

Raynal, A.L., (1985) Use of over-the-counter medications in rural Matabeleland, Zimbabwe: the case for upgrading the dispensing skills of rural storekeepers. Central African Journal of Medicine 31, 92-97

R Core Team (2018). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/.