BROWN BAG SEMINAR WITH DATATHON-DC WINNERS – OCTOBER 26, 2017

GCAN organized a brown bag seminar with two DATATHON-DC Winners, Naziha Sultana (International Center for Research on Women) and Adan Silverio Murillo (School of Public Affairs, American University), at USAID Headquarters in Washington, DC, on October 26. Tim Thomas and Jawoo Koo (both IFPRI) opened the seminar by introducing GCAN and DATATHON, highlighting the project’s overall activities so far and the team’s effort for harmonizing the datasets, programming the event, and sharing lessons learned through the process. This was followed by presentations by Naziha and Adan, who both shared their additional research work and findings since the DATATHON event. Naziha presented results from additional regression analyses exploring correlations between the gender of household head and children’s health outcomes in Bangladesh, finding the level of literacy and gender as the most important predictors across the country. Adan further developed his curios research question on the relationship between women’s public speaking and the height of children in Bangladesh. Beyond the initial assessments of significant correlations, Adan applied additional statistical examinations using the bounding and fixed-effects methodology to further investigate and presented a hypothesis that increased empowerment of men might be the driver of both women empowerment and children’s health outcomes. After the presentations, Naziha and Adan shared their appreciation for the team’s effort making the panel datasets harmonized and easy to use for research and stated they would also use other Feed the Future Population-Based Survey data available for other countries too. The GCAN team will use lessons learned from the first DATATHON to prepare the second event in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in November even more useful and impactful.

The presentations can all be found here: USAID DC GCAN DATATHON Presentation