Blood Testing Expert Consultant for Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) Support, DAPM, Data & Analytics Section - Data Collection Unit, NYHQ, remote. Req# 585222

About UNICEF

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines fordeveloping countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

Consultancy: Blood Testing Expert Consultant for Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) Support

Duty Station: Division of Data, Analytics, Planning and Monitoring (DAPM), Data & Analytics Section – Data Collection Unit

Duration: 15 Nov 2025 – 14 Nov 2026  

Home/ Office Based: Remote

 

BACKGROUND

Purpose of Activity/ Assignment:

UNICEF is a UN organisation mandated by the UN General Assembly to advocate for the protection of children’s rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential. UNICEF is working with its partners to support the Governments to realise children’s rights on survival, development, protection and participation.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfil their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

The Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) is an international household survey programme developed and supported by UNICEF. MICS is designed to collect data on key indicators that are used to assess the situation of children and women. Over the past three decades, MICS has continuously evolved to respond to changing data needs, expanding from 28 indicators in the first round in the mid-1990s to more than 250 indicators in the current seventh round, and has become a key source of data on child protection, early childhood education, and a major source of data on child health and nutrition. In addition to being a data collection tool to generate data for monitoring the progress towards national goals and global commitments for promoting the welfare of children, MICS provided valuable data for MDG and recently for SDG monitoring and reporting.

Since the inception of MICS in the 1990s, over 400 surveys have been carried out in more than 100 countries. As part of the global effort to further develop national capacities to generate and analyse high quality and disaggregated data, UNICEF launched the seventh round of MICS in 2023, with results of first surveys available by early 2025. This new round is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators endorsed by the UN Statistical Commission in 2016, following the global adoption of the 17 SDGs and 169 targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The final SDG indicator framework currently includes 231 global indicators, of which around one-third are household survey-based. Today, MICS is well-positioned to play a central role in this Agenda alongside other key demographic, health, and socio-economic surveys and to complement data from administrative sources and censuses. After undergoing rigorous methodological and validation work to broaden the scope of the tools and include numerous topics that reflect SDG indicators and emerging issues in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development context, MICS7 questionnaires in the new round cover half of the household survey-based SDG indicators.

 

Throughout its history, the Global MICS Programme has initiated and developed a wide range methodological advances with support of partners internal and external to UNICEF, both in areas of survey content and operationalisation. Increasingly, additional survey content sought by governments, UNICEF, and partners is of the most challenging nature. Recent additions to the standard MICS questionnaires include administration of reading and maths assessments of children, water quality testing, and the highly sensitive mental health and violence against women questions. The integration of these demanding components is accompanied with matching attention to expert technical assistance, quality control, and oversight. The methods, designs, and delivery of these expert mechanisms are well-established within the MICS Programme

It is within this context that the Global MICS