Research & evaluation
Baseline, midline and endline studies, impact evaluations and RCT field operations: sampling, instruments, ethics, fieldwork and reporting.
Working with ARCED Foundation and ARCED International · open to evaluation and systems assignments
Evidence that decides.
Systems that keep it honest.
Md. Zahirul Islam — Senior Research, MEAL & MIS Specialist, and Full-Stack Web & Data Systems Architect.
Thirteen years designing baseline, midline and endline evaluations, writing the SOPs and MEAL frameworks behind them, and building the web applications and MIS platforms that keep programme data flowing after the study ends.
KoboToolboxSPSSPower BITableauWeb & MIS systemsSurveyCTO · ODKStata · R · PythonSOP & MEAL frameworks
13+years in research, MEAL and systems
100+research and evaluation projects
20live web, AI and MIS platforms
30+international partners served
Two disciplines, one practice.
Research and evaluation tell you what is happening. Systems make the answer repeatable. I work across both so programmes get evidence they can act on and tools their teams will actually use.
MEAL systems & SOPs
Monitoring frameworks, indicator design, logframes, learning loops and the standard operating procedures that keep field and data teams consistent.
Digital data collection
Large-scale surveys programmed in KoboToolbox, SurveyCTO and ODK with built-in validation, high-frequency checks and audio audits.
Quantitative analysis
Descriptive and inferential analysis in SPSS, Stata, R and Python; clean, documented datasets delivered to principal investigators and clients.
Dashboards & visualisation
Interactive Power BI, Tableau and Looker Studio dashboards plus GIS mapping, so decision-makers see the evidence without opening a dataset.
Web & MIS architecture
Full-stack web applications, result portals, ERPs, e-commerce and news systems. Twenty live platforms designed, built and deployed, listed below.
Twenty platforms, all live.
AI assistants, school result portals, ERPs, law-firm and corporate sites, e-commerce stores and a daily news portal. Every row opens the real, running system.
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From questionnaire to dashboard.
What thirteen years of evaluation and MEAL work looks like in practice, with universities, UN agencies, governments and NGOs across Bangladesh.
Baseline
Sampling frames, listing and instrument design. A 908-participant Rohingya and host-community baseline on disaster resilience; USAID's early-learning baseline with an 844-parent phone survey.
Midline
Progress against indicators, high-frequency checks and midterm reviews, including the survey component of a Start Fund Bangladesh midterm evaluation.
Endline
Outcome and impact measurement against OECD-DAC criteria: the end-line evaluation of IFRC's Integrated Flood Resilience Programme and a 6,700-garment-worker endline survey.
8,400students assessed in a single World Bank study
43districts covered by a brick-kiln monitoring tracker
41health facilities audited for USAID MTaPS
Where the work shows
- Large-scale surveys. Factory-level RCT operations across Dhaka, Gazipur and Narayanganj; household air-quality trials from a 40-home pilot to a 2,500-household follow-up.
- SOP and MEAL design. Field manuals, enumerator training curricula, back-check and audio-audit protocols, indicator frameworks and daily reporting to principal investigators.
- Sectors. Health-care waste, education, garment labour, air quality, livelihoods, disaster resilience and market systems.
- Publications. Peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of the Knowledge Economy and GJRA, a Research Square preprint, and client evaluation reports.
Partners served include
World Bank, UC San Diego, Stanford, Georgetown, IFPRI & IFAD, ILO, USAID, IFRC, Oxfam, Save the Children, Innovations for Poverty Action, National University of Singapore, MIT, Yale, Plan International, BRAC University, Sesame Workshop, Swisscontact, Action Against Hunger, GAIN.
Working on a survey, evaluation or data system?
Open to research collaborations, evaluation assignments, MEAL consultancies and web or MIS builds, in Bangladesh through ARCED Foundation and across East Africa through ARCED International.
© 2026 Md. Zahirul Islam. All Rights Reserved.
Dhaka, Bangladesh