• Inform COAR’s operational and strategic analysis of contextual challenges, trends, and opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in support of donors, policy-makers, and programmers.
• Inform COAR’s analytical products that stimulate new approaches and policy responses to crisis, conflict, and emerging dynamics across the region.
• Inform COAR’s TPM assignments by collecting relevant primary data
• Inform COAR’s TPM assignments through field-level independent verification, monitoring, and quality assessment of program implementation.

Activities

• Participate in all induction sessions and training on research and monitoring methods and tools.
• Conduct research and data collection on a variety of issues including political, economic, security, historical, social, governance and regional state dynamics based on project-specific requirements, under the direction of COAR’s Research Unit.
• Provide data and basic analysis on stakeholders and systems (formal and informal) at the local, district, and national and regional levels, and provide insights on key factors and potential risks.
• Identify key informants using a combination of a network-based approach and snowball sampling, and conduct regular interviews with these key informants in support of COAR analytical products.
• Administer surveys (quantitative) and questionnaires (qualitative) with selected respondents to support either research products or TPM assignments.
• Conduct Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) as required.
• Maintain regular availability to provide responses on specific issues, topics, or projects and support team members in the production of analytic deliverables.
• Work in a committed, professional manner with consistency, integrity, and confidentiality.
• Uphold do-no-harm principles during the course of work, ensuring that respondents are safe, comfortable and informed about the research and monitoring processes, and their participation.
• Ensure that research is conducted in an ethical and safe manner while also taking into account localised security concerns.
• Provide feedback/recommendations to supervisors on improvements that could be made to streamline research processes.

Deliverables

• Collect and provide quantitative and qualitative data sets under the supervision of COAR’s Research Unit Lead.
• Conduct regular clarifying interviews with the Research Unit in order to fully verify and triangulate the data.
• Report local incidents, developments, rumors, and announcements, on both regular and real-time bases, specifically as they relate to project implementation or contextual changes such governance, security, or economic dynamics.
• Provide timely, in-depth written and/or verbal research findings on requests for information, situational, and thematic-based (English or Arabic).
• Provide timely, in-depth research, both written and verbal, on stakeholders, and their role in the local socio-political landscape.
• For TPM assignments, provide timely, in-depth interview notes from conducted KIIs or FGDs, and post field mission reports with relevant observations.
• As needed, support in the production of other analytic deliverables, including ad-hoc analyses of thematic, sectoral, or contextual topics of interest