Research Services

The Vendor is required to provide a variety of research and data related support needs and is looking for qualified agencies that can provide support and perform work.
- The research project will consist of:
• Online survey of active apprentices 
• Online survey of current sponsors 
- Research Agencies:
• Experience creating and conducting surveys; analyzing and reporting results;
• Ability to gather information through research, interviews, focus groups, etc.
• Experience with research affecting varying audiences, programs, and systems
• Experience creating reports and presentations of research and data findings
• Strong oral and written communication skills
• Experience in meeting tight deadlines
• Experience working with organizational senior leadership
• Professionalism and discretion
- Quantitative Research
• Conducting literature reviews
• Planning, developing and conducting public and stakeholder surveys and other quantitative research projects
o Managing data collection processes and analyzing quantitative data;
• Reporting and presenting research findings
- Qualitative Research
• Conducting literature reviews
• Planning, developing and conducting interviews, focus groups, and other qualitative research projects
• Managing data collection processes and analyzing qualitative data
• Reporting and presenting research findings
- Program & Performance Evaluation
• Conducting literature reviews and identifying best practices
• Developing and implementing program evaluation plans (including evaluating program impact, outcomes, cost-effectiveness, cost-benefits, and value)
• Monitoring performance measures (including collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data, ensuring and maintaining data quality)
• Reporting and presenting evaluation findings and recommendations.
- The research (field work, analysis and index calculations) and will be required to:
• Attend meetings, correspondence and conference calls with agency to develop the work plan, finalize the schedule, and discuss the project and questionnaire. 
• Developing the sampling frames for the current sponsor and active apprentice surveys using administrative databases provided by agency. 
• Examine the draft questionnaires provided by agency for each survey group and make relevant suggestions for improvement; modify the draft questionnaires as required; provide final draft versions of the questionnaires to agency before proceeding to testing; revise the questionnaire (if required) before and after testing.
• Provide agency with a test link to review the online survey and make edits as requested.
• Conduct a pre-test/soft launch of the survey with each survey group and summarize any issues/problems encountered along with suggestions for resolution.
• Administer the surveys via email and text messages to random samples drawn from the developed sampling frames and complete the number of required surveys.  
• Review the distributions of the results with agency to determine if a weighting scheme needs to be applied to the data. 
• Clean and analyze the survey data - this includes coding open-ended comments, creating an excel file (including agency data appended and weight variables), and creating cross tabulations of the results. 
• Submit preliminary top-line results of the surveys and draft KPI calculations. 
• Produce a draft report which contains at a minimum an overview of the objectives and methodology, all descriptive information gathered from the surveys.
• Produce the final version of the report which incorporates any feedback from agency.
• Provide regular updates to agency. 
• Ensure effective quality control measures (including that all data collected is hosted on a state server). 
• Include in the online survey a section for the contest entry, randomly draw the winners from the list of survey completers, distribute the prizes and provide agency the name of the winners.