Consultancy Dietary Data Collection Project, Washington

We are looking for an external researcher to help us with the innovations in digital dietary data collection project in Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, the Better Diets and Nutrition Science Program through IFPRI is collaborating with the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) and Wageningen University and Research, through its Senior Expert Programme, and developing a “push” method of collecting sub-sets of the Diet Quality Questionnaire (DQQ), which can be used to measure various diet quality indicators, including the Minimum Dietary Diversity among Women (MDD-W), which is now an SDG indicator and one of the CGIAR level nutrition outcomes.

The goal of the overall project is to test the use of text messages to collect data from the diet quality questionnaire. IFPRI is looking for work to support this project, which will ideally work through random digit dialing.

We note we are also examining how to link this data collection effort with other DTA-supported efforts to conduct high frequency monitoring, such as a similar effort by the Alliance in Guatemala.

Overarching research questions for the project include:

• How many questions can we ask (out of the 29) before most respondents stop answering?
• How does the bias compare to surveys collected in-person? Does the bias manifest throughout the survey, or as one asks more questions?
• What is the best way to address those biases?
• When we publish data with FAIR standards using this method, are we better off putting a warning label on it or initially addressing the biases and describing our methods?

We are looking for an arrangement, such as a post-doc, who can help with the following activities in 2026:

• Support the organization of a project meeting towards the end of 2026 in Ethiopia
• Write the inception report about the use of digital dietary data collection in Ethiopia with the proposed research agenda and steps to be taken for the next 3 years.

We hope that the arrangement can continue into 2027 with the following tasks:

• Set up the analyses from questions arising under 2 in the Rwanda and Guatemala dataset on digital dietary data collection
• Coordinating support across project activities and partners (IFPRI, WUR, EPHI, telecoms)

• Inception Report and Preliminary Research Agenda

• PhD degrees in Nutrition or related field
• Demonstrated professional experiences (peer-reviewed publications) of similar food science experiments within the past 10 years, including the past 5 years
• Demonstrated experience working on dietary data
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Final date to receive applications:
October 6, 2026