Event Report
Bhanvi
A Two-Month Immersive Online Hands-On Certificate Training Course on Data, Monitoring and Evaluation was organized by #IMPRI Generation Alpha Data Center (GenAlphaDC), IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi in June (3, 10, 17, 24), July (1, 8, 15, 22), 2023.
The session was inaugurated by Fiza Mahajan, a researcher at IMPRI, who welcomed and introduced the speakers and eminent panelists. The course, spread over two months, involved detailed discussion on various topics. The Conveners for the course were Dr Simi Mehta, CEO & Editorial Director, IMPRI and Dr Arjun Kumar, Director at IMPRI.
The participant for the program was from all parts of the country and came from various fields like academics, research, corporates, civil bodies, practitioners and many more. For the complete list, visit our participants list and details page.
Day 1 | June 3, 2023
On the first day of Data, Monitoring and Evaluation, was taken by experts Prof Mukul Asher, and Prof Nilanjan Banik.
The first session of the course was taken by Prof Mukul Asher, Former Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore; Visiting Distinguished Professor at IMPRI. He concentrated on Descriptive Statistics and Public Policy in order to lay a strong foundation for the participants for further sessions of the program. He stressed the importance of descriptive statistics and how its use is being abused, so it is necessary to be a keen observer and know the technique of using descriptive statistics in order to be a good researcher. During his session, he took live examples of recent happenings in the news and shared some good study material for better understanding and perusal.
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The second session of Day 1 was taken by Prof Nilajan Banik, Professor and Program Director (BA, Economics and Finance), Mahindra University, Hyderabad; Visiting Consultant, IMPRI, who gave an overview of what he will be covering in the course and conducted the first Hands-on Data Learning Session: Probability distributions: Density and Cumulative. The first Hands-on data learning session includes topics of probability, density, and distribution function along with its interpretations and real-world applications.
Datasets of probability were shared with the participants for practice. He also explained how to conclude and find values for the “T” test and the ideology of why and what we do in these tests along with their relevance.
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Day 2 | June 10, 2023
The second day of the course was conducted by Dr Soumyadip Chattopadhyay and Prof Nilanjan Banik.
A Hands-on Learning Session on Introduction to ANOVA was taken by Prof Nilanjan Banik, Professor and Program Director (BA, Economics and Finance), Mahindra University, Hyderabad; Visiting Consultant, IMPRI in which he mentioned about the importance of t-test statistics and how it can be used to diagnose whether any sample mean is better than others. He shows what values the variables for comparison in the formula take, and the variables can be anything like the accessibility of basic healthcare, education, etc. Moving ahead he introduced the concept of the Right/Left/Two-tailed test. He explains the concept of a null hypothesis and alternate hypothesis and gives the formula to calculate the t value.
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Session 2 of day 2 was taken by Dr. Soumyadip Chattopadhyay, Associate Professor, Economics, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan; Visiting Senior Fellow, IMPRI on Data Deluge and Public Policy: Promises and Perils. He discussed about huge amount of data that is being generated in recent times and the implications of it in public policy decisions and choices.
During his session, he discussed what is Public Policy?, its linkages with the digital economy, its pitfalls in terms of the cost of storage and disseminating data along with its accessibility. He concluded the session by raising some of the newer challenges that are ahead of policymakers.
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Day 3 | June 17, 2023
The third day of the course was conducted by Dr. Amar Jesani and Prof Nilanjan Banik.
Session 1 of day 3 was taken by Dr. Amar Jesani, Independent Researcher and Teacher (Bioethics and Public Health); Editor, Indian Journal of Medical Ethics on Research Ethics in Primary Data Collection and Analysis. He emphasized the role of ethics as a field concerned with the rights of those on the “weaker side of the divide”. From that, he drew that the subject matter of Medical Ethics is the rights of the patients. Research Ethics are shown to be concerned with the rights and protection of the participants/subjects. He also discussed the ethics linked to data management and data sharing.
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A Hands-on Learning session on EVIEWS was taken by Prof Nilanjan Banik, Professor and Program Director (BA, Economics and Finance), Mahindra University, Hyderabad; Visiting Consultant, IMPRI who explained the need for policy intervention and the statistical significance of Government policies with the concept of multiple regression, dependent variable, which is the function of many independent variables, Linear Regression, and Data and how to deal with Errors found in the model. He concluded the session by discussing the usage of EVIEWS in research and practical life.
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Day 4 | June 24, 2023
The fourth day of the course was conducted by Prof Vibhuti Patel and Prof Nilanjan Banik.
A session on Gender Mainstreaming of Data, Monitoring, and Evaluation was taken by Prof. Vibhuti Patel, Visiting Distinguished Professor, IMPRI. She emphasized the need to develop a database that must be responsive to the diversity of various groups of women, men, transgender persons, persons with disabilities, and their specific activities and challenges. She stressed the need for gender statistics to develop various gender indicators for achieving efficiency and reducing poverty.
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Prof Nilanjan Banik, Professor and Program Director (BA, Economics and Finance), Mahindra University, Hyderabad; Visiting Consultant, IMPRI took the training class on Anova, explained mean squares, ESS, RSS, TSS, Derivation of F both for model components and Y bar-vis-a-vis Y-hat, How to calculate t-statistics, check for endogeneity, corollary, the covariance between Y-hat with error, Prediction/forecast, interval estimation of parameters and Ys, Two types of prediction; prediction for the mean value of Y and prediction for individual Y, Prediction error higher for the individual Ys than for the mean Y, Prediction Y using dummy variables.
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Day 5 | July 1, 2023
The fifth day of the course was conducted by Dr. Radhika Pandey, Dr Devender Singh and Prof. V Ramakrishnan.
The session on the Analysis of State Budget and Public Finance Data was taken by Dr. Radhika Pandey, Senior Fellow, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi. She delved into the importance of data in comparing various states’ performance based on the comparative study of various indicators such as GDP, economic development, infrastructure enhancement, etc. She drew a crucial distinction between the Central Government and state budgets. Moving further she highlighted the role of data in determining a state’s fiscal health along with the evaluation of states on the basis of their debt sustainability.
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The second session of day 5 was taken by Dr Devender Singh, Global Studies Programme, University of Freiburg, Germany; Visiting Senior Fellow, IMPRI on A Practitioner’s Experience of Data, Monitoring & Evaluation. He discussed the components of monitoring along with the importance of effectiveness and efficiency of evaluation. He further stated the evolving perspective on M&E, shifting from a traditional approach of measuring and reporting progress to a current view that emphasizes learning, adaptation, and course correction.
Dr. Singh concluded the session by emphasizing that M&E should not be viewed as a mere exercise to be undertaken at the end of a program but rather as an integral part that should be initiated from the beginning and maintained throughout the program lifecycle.
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The concluding session of day 5 was taken by Prof. V Ramakrishnan, on How to read Financial Statements. He discussed the role of data in determining the performance of the company as a balance sheet provides information or tells the position of the company on the particular data i.e., 31st March and these statements gave insights about the operations of the business in terms of the position of the company in terms of assets and liabilities and how much money had been invested till now and cash generated from those activities.
Throughout the session, he also threw some light on other financial statements such as cash flow statements, profit and loss accounts, income and expenditure statements, etc., and taught the reading techniques of these statements.
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Day 6 | July 8, 2023
The sixth day of the course was conducted by Professor Gummadi Shridevi, and Prof Ismail Haque.
Day 6 of the program included the session on “Field Research, Quantitative Socio-Economic, and Regional Data Analysis” by Professor Gummadi Shridevi. She analyzed the Importance of Primary Data along with the parallel existence of secondary data as that might impact the current purview of the research. She further stressed the subjectivity over objectivity, of the process of data collection.
Moving further she gave some tips regarding the ethics that need to be taken care of while performing any field research along with the minute details while selecting the topic for research that needs to be analyzed, while concluding the session she mentioned the key areas that a researcher has to look upon while conducting field research.
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The second session for the day was taken by Prof Ismail Haque, Fellow, ICRIER and Visiting Fellow, IMPRI on Spatial Data Analysis with Introduction to GIS and Visualization. During the course, he taught the operation of GIS software; QGIS, ArcGIS, and MapInfo. Then he elaborated on the methodical six-step procedure involved in GIS mapping. The premier part of his session was the engrossing demonstration of the initial steps of map-making. For this, he displayed a how-to on ‘Geo-referencing’ on the QGIS software. Then the session ended with the questions/ answers round with active participation from the audience.
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Day 7 | July 15, 2023
The seventh day of the course was conducted by Prof. Vina Vaswani, and Mr. V Ramakrishnan.
Introduction and Critical Reflections on Forensic Health and Data was taken by Prof. Vina Vaswani, Director, Centre for Ethics, and Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, Yenepoya (Deemed to be) University, Mangalore. She discussed the difference between forensic and healthcare data.
Throughout her session she conferred upon Applications of Forensic data, and its ethical issues in which she mentioned that special attention needs to be given to ensuring accuracy and reliability while collecting data as these two components are of paramount importance as they will impact the lives and liberties of people and also methods and techniques used to collect, analyze and interpret data should be scientifically validated and transparent.
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The second session of the day was taken by Mr. V Ramakrishnan on Project Management with the help of KRA’s and KPI’s. He initiated by giving a brief summary of the concept of Project Management and how it is simply the proficient application of the team’s resources at hand help to meet the project’s requirements. Moving further he aptly defined the two terms; the two are indexes of how effectively an outcome has been delivered. KRA’s point to ‘the value delivered against what is to be delivered’.
KPIs are the metric for the productiveness of the activity required to deliver a KRA. Concluding the session he stressed how KPIs are of no use without systematized KRA’s and effectual project management.
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Day 8 | July 22, 2023
The eighth day of the course was conducted by Mr. Rakesh Pandey, and Dr. Arjun Kumar.
The session for day 8 was taken by Mr. Rakesh Pandey, Assistant Policy Researcher, Doctoral Scholar, Pardee RAND Graduate School, RAND Corporation, USA, who summarized the session objective as ‘an introduction to widely used quantitative methods in impact evaluation research’. Delving into the crux of the subject matter he discussed the three major identification strategies that were Randomized Control Trials (RCTs), Difference-in-Difference, and Regression Discontinuity Design along with various Impact Evaluation Methods.
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The last session of the course was taken by Dr. Arjun Kumar, Director, IMPRI which mentioned various statistical tools for various official and non-official data, issues & challenges, and the way forward. Various data sources, collection techniques, and websites for the chief three sectors of our economy i.e., primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors were discussed along with various datasets that are available and how they can be accessed. At the end of the session, various issues and challenges in terms of data such as time, credibility, and reliability were highlighted.
Concluding the session various initiatives were discussed along with some suggestions to maintain the authenticity and reliability of data.
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The courses ended with active participation from the audience who raised pertinent questions throughout the sessions and contributed towards making this program a success.
Acknowledgment: This event report is written by Bhanvi.
