As per our five objectives, we deliver services that fall into five classes as follows:
Social and evaluative research
This include but not limited to baseline studies, program evaluations, operations research, academic research, market research, situational assessment, desk reviews, etc.
Informed book and paper publishing and information dissemination
This involves writing research papers and books on topical community development matters for wider sharing through conferences, symposia, workshops, etc.
Training
We are generous with our technical skills to train aspirants in the following skills for a reasonable fee:
- Research design
- Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL)
- Project cycle management
- Technical writing (reports and minutes, policy briefs, position papers, newsletters, publishable research articles, blogs, etc.)
Pre and post-research process facilitation
In order to translate research knowledge into action we facilitate such follow-up processes as strategic planning, program design, proposal writing, resource mobilization, M&E framework development sessions.
Documentation
We understand that research is for the consumption of every community member, yet not all are conversant with social science rhetoric. We therefore repackage complex research facts into simpler formats for lay people, e.g., video documentaries, summaries in local languages, etc.
Special attributes of our services
As much as VAL!Data Research is a profit-oriented private corporate, its work is driven by a quest for partnership with organizations that contract it and communities that they serve. This partnership is achieved through (a) using proceeds of consultancy work to support corporate social responsibility projects that empower local communities and (b) granting voluntary services to help financially challenged organizations to follow up on the findings and effectively implement recommendations of our researches.
We conduct researches that facilitate learning as much as possible by (a) repackaging our findings into manuals, pamphlets, etc., (b) producing project closure reports at the end of each assignment in which we chronicle our process, its challenges and lessons to guide the planning of future researches, and (c) facilitating follow up planning processes.
We believe that researches are meant to inform remedial actions, so we strictly apply utilization—focused research principles that include consultative planning of research processes, submission of weekly progress reports, packaging of research information in multiple formats for ease of use among non—technical users, etc.
We believe that the most objective picture of social research comes from multiple sources of primary and secondary data as well as multiple research methods. We triangulate all the way and so inform sound decisions!
We view research as a process and part of community development efforts, not an event or add-on. We therefore offer every other prior and follow-up service that blends research with the whole package of community and organizational development.
We move with times when it comes to research technologies and no longer use paper-based data collection tools, but tablets anchored on KoBo-Collect software. We use Stata, SPSS and Excel for quantitative data analysis. For qualitative analysis we use N-Vivo.