Working in Development

• Background
• In-country experience
• Our services in support of development work
• Work for the UK Government's Department for International Development (DFID)
• Publications available, thanks in part to funding from DFID:
  • SSC's Guides to Good Statistical Practice
  • Case studies of good statistical practice
  • Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (QQA)
• Software available to download:
  • Instat, a comprehensive statistical package, with extensive climate data features
  • SSC-Stat, an add-in for Microsoft® Excel, giving improved statistical facilities and some powerful data management tools

Background

The Statistical Services Centre has a substantial history of providing support in the developing world. Several members of staff have worked abroad for substantial periods of time. Through our experiences we have gained an understanding of the livelihoods/poverty agenda and are happy to work in partnership with others to achieve successful project outputs. Whether the project involves training or consultancy we are always interested in successful capacity building; in training projects we also aim to support and facilitate the transfer of skills and materials where appropriate.

In-country experience

Over the years the SSC has provided consultancy and training in many countries, including Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Mexico, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, Venezuela, Zambia and Zimbabwe - to name but a few!

Funding agencies include the British Council, Darwin Initiative, DFID, WMO, the World Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation.

You are welcome to look at some examples of our work, and some associated case studies.

Services to support development work

The SSC can provide inputs to a range of data collection activities such as monitoring and evaluation exercises, on-farm trials, surveys, and participatory work. These can be concerning people's livelihood, as well as natural resource issues concerning, e.g. forestry, agriculture and livestock. Our involvement can be one-off queries through to being a member of the project team.

We can also advise on or participate in training programmes for project teams or individual researchers. These capacity building exercises can be undertaken either in-country or in the UK. In all our work we support and collaborate with local statisticians wherever possible.

For more information about our services, e-mail statistics@lists.rdg.ac.uk or contact us by post, telephone or fax.

Last updated 30 September, 2005