U.S. Information Agency, International Broadcasting Bureau, Office of Personnel and Administration, Contracts and Procurement Division, B/PA/AC, Room 1645, 330 Independence Ave., S.W., Washington, DC 20547

B -- NATIONAL AUDIENCE SURVEY IN VENEZUELA SOL B/PA-99-36 DUE 091799 POC Contact Point/Contracting Officer: Gloria Sweetney, Contracting Officer, Telephone: (202) 619-1623; Facsimile: (202) 205-1921. E-MAIL: Click here to contact the Contracting Officer via, gjsweetn@IBB.GOV. This public notice is also a written Request for Quotation (RFQ) No. B/PA-99-36 pursuant to procurement of the required services as described below using the "Simplified Acquisition Procedures" specified in Part 13 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). Price quotations submitted in response to this RFQ that exceed the Simplified Acquisition Threshold (as specified in FAR Subpart 2.101, Definitions) will not be considered as responsive to this RFQ. The United States Information Agency's International Broadcasting Bureau (USIA/IBB) has a requirement, subject to availability of funds, for a contractor to obtain quantitative data on the size, composition, and media habits of the audience for Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts in Venezuela. Quoters are herein requested to submit written price quotations and technical capabilities/experience information for conducting an audience survey as outlined below. SECTION A: SCOPE OF WORK 1) Nature of Survey. Audience data shall be obtained through a nationalsurvey of Venezuela that is designed to obtain the most accurate possible information about: the number of regular (i.e. weekly) and occasional listeners to VOA's broadcasts; the demographic characteristics and geographical distribution of the audience; the size of the regular and occasional listening audience for other international and domestic broadcasters; and general patterns of media use. The interviews shall be face-to-face and they shall be conducted in the home of the respondent by a trained interviewer. IBB will require demographic information on each respondent including, gender, age, education, and occupation. 2) General Responsibilities of Contractor. The contractor shall be responsible for the project design, translation, formatting, pretesting, adaptation, and printing of IBB supplied questionnaires; developing the sampling plan; training interviewers; supervising fieldwork; cleaning and encoding survey responses; entering and processing the data; ascertaining the representativeness of the sample and weighting the data, if necessary; preparing cross-tabulations in data books; submitting data on diskette; and communicating all necessary audience survey information and results to IBB in a timely manner. 3) Sample Design. Interested quoters are herein requested to submit price quotations for a sample of 2,000 adults, age 15 or older, representative by gender, age, and education of the adult Spanish-speaking population of Venezuela. The sample shall be stratified to include sub-samples representative of each province. Quoters may propose sample designs that exclude certain provinces or remote, less-populated parts of provinces deemed impractical to survey for reasons of logistics, security or cost-effectiveness. Price quotations shall describe the rationale for such proposed exclusions, as well as and the estimated size of the population excluded, which shall not total more than approximately 10% of the national population. The sample shall be drawn using recognized probability methods, all the way down to the selection of the individual respondent at the household level. Only one individual per household shall be selected, and at least three attempts shall be made to interview selected respondents before substitution is allowed. A detailed Sampling Plan, including stratification criteria, description of the sampling frame, listing of anticipated Primary Sampling Units (PSUs), approximate number of interviews in each, procedures for selecting households within PSUs, and procedures for selecting individual respondents at the household level, shall be submitted to and approved by IBB prior to commencement of fieldwork. 4) Questionnaire. IBB will supply a set of questions (in English) for an interview lasting approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour. The questionnaire will consist of approximately 70 questions, up to 5 of which may be open-ended. The questionnaire will be provided in draft form for suggestions and comments, based on the contractor's knowledge of local cultural or political sensitivities. Following receipt of the contractor's comments, IBB shall provide a final version of the questionnaire for translation by the contractor into Spanish. The contractor shall prepare translations of the questionnaire in Spanish and shall submit these translations to IBB for approval prior to pre-test. The contractor shall be responsible for compiling a comprehensive list of both local and international broadcast media available in the local environment in the areas to be surveyed. This information shall be used to compile a precoded list of stations on the survey and shall be submitted to IBB for approval prior to finalization of the questionnaire. Following IBB's review of contractor comments and IBB's final approval of translations of questionnaires, the contractor shall prepare final versions in Spanish in a form suitable for use by interviewers. 5) Pre-test. The questionnaire shall be pre-tested by the contractor prior to the commencement of any fieldwork. At least 25 pre-test interviews shall be conducted. The contractor shall provide IBB with a written report of the results of the pre-test, along with details of any problems encountered and suggested remedies, prior to the commencement of any fieldwork. 6) Fieldwork. Interviews shall be conducted by experienced field workers who shall be thoroughly briefed by contractor prior to commencement of fieldwork. The contractor shall ensure that interviewers are thoroughly familiar with household and respondent selection procedures, call back procedures, and the structure of the questionnaire, including routing and filtering. Interviewer training shall include practice sessions in administering the questionnaire. A minimum of 10% of the interviews shall be back checked and 5% shall be accompanied by a team supervisor. 7) Data Processing. The contractor shall be responsible for data entry, cleaning, and processing. The contractor shall provide printed tabulations of results, including percentage responses to all questions broken down by gender, age group, and educational level. Tabulations shall show weighted and unweighted base and response frequencies for each question. The contractor shall supply data to IBB as an SPSS for Windows syntax file (*.sps) file and as an SPSS (*.sav) file with a complete data dictionary of variable names and value labels. In addition, the contractor shall supply raw data in plain ASCII format, with codebook showing values and column locations of all variables. There shall be one data record for each respondent and records shall be of fixed length. If weights are used, weighting factors shall be in the same position on each record, with location specified in the codebook. Each record shall include a unique respondent ID number, interviewer ID number, PSU ID number, and codes for precise location and date of interview. Each record shall include demographic information about the respondent, including: gender, exact age, education level, occupation, and ethnicity. In addition to exact age, record for each respondent shall be coded by age group as follows: 15-24; 25-39; and 40+. This coding scheme shall be the age categories used in the printed tabulations mentioned above. 8) Technical Appendix. When delivering printed tabulations and raw data, the contractor shall provide a "Technical Appendix" which shall include the following: 1) A complete Sampling Plan, including list of PSUs and individual sampling points and number of interviews conducted at each sampling point; 2) Details of response rates; 3) Interviewer instructions; 4) A brief report on survey operations including any practical difficulties encountered in conducting the survey; 5) The estimated sampling error; 6) A complete explanation of the weighting scheme including details of how weighting factors were developed and applied, as well as the demographic data on which weights were based; 7) A brief description of each local radio and television station covered in the survey, including: ownership, political affiliation (if any), years of operation, hours of broadcast, means of broadcast (i.e. AM, FM, etc), and general program content. 9) Summary of deliverables. See preceding paragraphs for detailed description of requirements for each deliverable. The four Deliverables to be provided to IBB by the contractor under this contract are as follows: a. Raw data from the survey on diskette in plain ASCII format, with codebook; b. A complete data set formatted as SPSS file (as per Subsection A.7); c. Printed tabulations of all survey results; d. Technical Appendix (as per Subsection A.8). 10) Delivery Schedule. The contractor shall perform the work under this contract in accordance with the following Delivery Schedule: a. Provision of detailed Sampling Plan to IBB within 2 weeks of contractor's receipt of confirmation of contract award; b. Submission of translated questionnaires within 2 weeks of contractor's receipt of IBB draft; c. Pretesting to be completed and pretest report submitted to IBB within 2 weeks of IBB's approval of the questionnaire translations; d. After pretesting and IBB's approval of pretest report, interviewing shall begin within 1 week and be completed within an additional 4 weeks; e. Cleaned, verified data and a final report must be delivered to IBB no later than 6 weeks after conclusion of all fieldwork. SECTION B: SUBMISSION OF RESPONSES TO THE RFQ (i.e., TECHNICAL INFORMATION): In the event that all price quotations for the work specified in this RFQ significantly exceed IBB's budget, IBB reserves the right to reduce the scope of the work specified herein. Each quoter's response to this RFQ shall include sufficient quantitative/qualitative information on the following technical items to enable the IBB to objectively evaluate the quoter's capabilities/experience to successfully perform the work specified above in this RFQ: a. A detailed description of the proposed research methodology, including specific listing of organizations the quoter shall use for fieldwork; b. Current information on the qualifications of quoter's office and field staff; c. Specific information on quoter's past experience in conducting media research and survey research in Venezuela or other countries in the region; d. A detailed description of the proposed fieldwork plan, including Sampling Plan and procedures, number and type of sampling points and the manner in which interviews shall be allocated across the population, interviewers' qualifications and proposed training; and e. A schedule showing the time required for each phase of the project which would include (1) translation, pretest, reporting of pretest results and printing of final questionnaire, (2) completion of fieldwork, (3) completion of data verification, data entry and codebook, (4) delivery of data files and media environment/methodological report -- detailed description of the proposed research methodology, including specific listing of organizations the vendor shall use for fieldwork (if sub-contractors are to be used). SECTION C. SELECTION CRITERIA. A contract (i.e., Purchase Order) award will be made by the contracting officer based on: A) the quoter's Technical Capabilities/Experience (for which there are five (5) equally weighted subcriteria); and B) the quoter's Price Quotation. Of the two Selection Criteria, Technical Capabilities /Experience is the significantly dominant criterion over the Price criterion. The Technical Capabilities/Experience subcriteria are as follows: 1. Demonstrated experience in conducting quantitative research on broadcast media; 2. Demonstrated experience in conducting survey research in Venezuela or other countries in the region; 3. Quality of the proposed sampling technique; 4. Quality of the proposed procedures for data collection, entry, and verification; 5. Ability to complete the project in a timely manner. In addition to specifically addressing the above-stated technical items, a quoter's response to this RFQ shall also provide technical details on any proposed subcontractors who would be engaged to work on this project. Omission of any of the above-requested information pertaining to the quoterand/or any subcontractors proposed by the quoter in performing this contract, will weigh against the quoter during the Contracting Officer's evaluation of the quoter's response to this RFQ. Firms interested in the above described work are requested to submit their responses to this RFQ (i.e., Technical Capabilities/Experience and Schedule information, and Price quotation) by the close of business (5 p.m. EST), Friday, September 17, 1999, and they shall reference this RFQ No. B/PA-99-36 in their transmittal letter to the Contracting Officer. All questions (technical or otherwise) by a prospective quoter regarding this RFQ shall be in writing. Any questions and the quoter's complete written response to this RFQ shall be sent directly to the Contracting Officer for this procurement, Ms. Gloria Sweetney, via facsimile at (202) 205-1921. The Price quotations submitted as part of a quoter's response to this RFQ shall be on a separate page from the above-requested Technical Capabilities/Experience and Schedule information. In addition to the quoter's proposed Total Contract Price, the quoter's Price quotation shall be further broken down into the following component prices: a) preparation work; b) fieldwork; c) data processing; d) report preparation; and e) miscellaneous. The Contracting Officer has found and determined that this proposed work is appropriate for an "unrestricted" procurement pursuant to FAR Subpart 19.502 (Setting Aside Acquisitions). All responsible sources may submit a quotation which will be considered by the Government. Posted 08/26/99 (W-SN372785). (0238)

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