Research and Fieldwork in Development

Daniel Hammett, Chasca Twyman, Mark Graham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134110810
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Research and Fieldwork in Development explores both traditional and cutting edge research methods, from interviews and ethnography to spatial data and digital methods. Each chapter provides the reader with an understanding of the theoretical basis of research methods, reflects upon their practice and outlines appropriate analysis techniques. The text also provides a cutting edge focus on the role of new media and technologies in conducting research. The final chapters return to a set of broader concerns in development research, providing a new and dynamic set of engagements with ethics and risk in fieldwork, integrating methods and engaging development research methods with knowledge exchange practices. Each chapter is supported by several case studies written by global experts within the field, documenting encounters and experiences and linking theory to practice. Each chapter is also complimented by an end of chapter summary, suggestions for further reading and websites, and questions for further reflection and practice. The text critically locates development research within the field of international development to give an accessible and comprehensive introduction to development research methods.

This book provides an invaluable overview to the practice of international development research and serves as an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate student embarking of development fieldwork. It is supported by online resources including extended bibliographies for each chapter, example risk and ethic forms, example policy briefing notes, research reports, links to websites and data sources.

Part I

PLANNING DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH

1

DESIGNING RESEARCH

In order to give your research the best chance of being successful, it is important to ensure you are well prepared and have spent sufficient time developing a considered and coherent research design. Key research design concerns need to be addressed to ensure your research practice and findings are reliable, valid, trustworthy, credible and dependable and that your conduct is in keeping with ethical guidelines and expectations.

Alongside concerns with the quality of your research you need to address a further set of factors. For instance, your ontological and epistemological positions frame how you develop a research idea and the questions you ask. Practical considerations of when, where and for how long you can conduct fieldwork are also integral, not least for those with partners, families and mortgages to consider (Chapter 4). While much of the discussion below regarding research design focuses on theoretical and methodological concerns, we recognize that research does not occur in a vacuum and the realities of life will be pivotal in your decision making. These concerns derive not only from your ‘home’ life, but also due to the context of the research site where concerns over issues such as safety, security and surveillance may be important considerations (Chapter 6; Koch 2013).You should not shy away from these concerns as you develop and design your research, but rather accept these as integral factors to the way in which you operationalize your plans.

There are numerous ways in which you can approach the designing of your research project. Whichever path you take will involve a number of core building blocks and activities that fit together to provide the framework for your research activities. The sequence which you work through, conceive of and integrate these blocks will depend on a range of factors. These factors include the driving force behind your interest, the time available to plan the activities and the nature of the research itself. The process outlined below should not been seen as a one-size-fits-all process, but rather a guide to the different aspects to be considered in developing, and delivering on, your research proposal.

It is also important to acknowledge that research design is not a one-way street. It is an iterative and reflective process whereby new information, experience and evidence can be integrated into the research process. You should have a willingness to be flexible and adaptable in the questions asked and methods used in order to overcome challenges or to address emergent concerns. Siân Parkinson’s reflections (Box 1.1) on the ways in which her fieldwork experience in Malawi challenged her understandings and expectations of gender empowerment practices should remind you that research is a learning process and you can – indeed should – develop your research project as you learn from the research experience.

Box 1.1 Siân Parkinson: Reflections on the importance of field research in increasing cultural awareness

Prior to conducting field research in Malawi I believed I had a critical and comprehensive understanding of the gendered dimensions of the development process built on extensive literature reviews and engagements with theories and reports of gender and development. Yet it became apparent to me while conducting research into opportunities for female empowerment provided by microfinance organizations in Malawi that this prior knowledge was limited by my lack of research experience.

The majority of the organizations I worked with in Malawi offered microloans exclusively to women. However, I was surprised to learn that in all of these cases the husband’s permission had to be obtained as a prerequisite to receiving the loan. The organizations encouraged women to consult with their husbands, and were alike in stating that the loans would not be granted against the husband’s wishes. My immediate feeling was that this was paradoxical: the microloans could help women gain economic independence, but this was dependent on the support of their husbands. I was initially frustrated to learn of this and so enquired as to the decisions behind why this was the case.

Respondents referred to the gender relations that operated within their culture, where the husband was considered head of the household and made the majority of household decisions. I realised that I had, mistakenly, not fully considered the cultural context in which the microfinance organizations were operating. Conducting empirical field research enabled me to think critically about and enhance my own cultural awareness. Additionally, I had not considered the implications on gender relations if the women were to receive loans without their husband’s support. Responses from interviews highlighted the potential issues concerning this, where female economic independence might be viewed as a threat to masculinity. Even though my main focus was on female empowerment, these findings were strengthened by interviewing both men and women involved or implicated in these development interventions. Involving both genders in such research is advocated by theories of gender and development, but I had no experience of the practical significance of this prior to conducting this field research. It was clear from my findings that this approach provided me with a broader set of insights than if I had only interviewed women.

In order to begin the journey of developing and designing a research project it is important to identify the key building blocks required. Box 1.2 identifies these, providing a short comment on each and indicating where in this book further guidance on each component can be found.

Box 1.2 The building blocks of research design

Block A: Overarching research theme/topic – this is the ‘big picture’ or ‘big question’ you want to address in your research. Essentially, this is the heart of the project. This overarching theme will, in conjunction with your -ological approach, determine the kinds of method you can use in your project, as different types of question/theme will need different types of data (who, what, where, why, how, when …). See following sections in Chapter 1 and also Chapter 2.

Block B: Research questions – these are the more defined and focused questions your research will address in order to understand/address the overarching research theme. These are not the questions to be asked in your interviews, surveys, etc., they are the bones – the skeleton – that gives structure to your project (i.e. in order to address A, I need to find out about B1, B2, B3, and B4). See following section in Chapter 1.

Block C: Methods – different types of question, and different epistemological and methodological approaches, require different methods: there is no point in using a national-level census to find out how people in a specific village understand climate change and livelihood adaptation! See chapters in Part II for further guidance on different methods and when to use them.

Block D: Ethics, risk, and logistics – If we lived and worked in an ideal world, this block would be of minimal importance. In reality, it is always a key determinant of our research as it informs the scope of the research questions addressed, the methods used, sample size targeted, etc. Items to consider here include the length of time available for the project (and for data collection in particular), where these data must be collected and how (and the time and economic costs involved, including visas, travel and accommodation costs, other resource needs), risk and safety (for instance, if there are travel advisory notices against travel to the area in which you wish to conduct research this may prevent or severely restrict your research project as there are important implications for travel insurance, risk assessments, etc.), ethics, local context and sociocultural norms. See Chapters 4, 5 and 6.

Block E: Literature review – this may inform the development of your research topic and/or questions or may be framed by an existing interest and topic decision. Either way, a rigorous and sound knowledge of existing studies, theories and understanding is required in order to develop appropriate and adequate research questions and to locate your work within existing knowledge. See subsequent sections of Chapter 1.

Block F: Dissemination and outputs – whether this is simply your dissertation or thesis or includes academic publications, research reports, policy briefs and other materials for both academic and/or non-academic audiences, it is important to consider what you plan to do with the data you have collected. Implicit in these reflections are concerns with the impact your work may have on theory, policy and practice, but also in relation to what promises you may make and then need to deliver on for your hosts and supporters. See Part III.

To illustrate the ways in which these building blocks can be addressed and brought together, a number of Dan’s experiences are included here (Box 1.3). As you will see, there is no single ‘best’ way to design a research project; research projects are products of numerous negotiations throughout the process.

Box 1.3 Examples of coming to the research

Dan: 1. I was approached to contribute a chapter, based on previous work on the role of satire in political expression, to an edited book addressing how resistance and governmentality were being experienced in sub-Saharan Africa. In previous work, I had focused on the production of satire and, in broad terms, popular and government responses to these products. In reviewing the literature for this earlier work, I was struck by Dittmer and Gray’s (2010) comment that a continued focus on the role of elites in producing and interpreting satire meant little attention was paid to audiences’ understandings of and reactions to such products.

My contribution to the book was therefore designed to offer an initial investigation into audience responses to a set of controversial cartoons by the South African cartoonist, Zapiro. Ideally, this research would have involved interviews with the cartoonist and key figures in political parties and civil society organizations who had been outspoken in their responses to the ‘Rape of Lady Justice’ cartoon series, as well as focus group discussions with demographically varied groups who were exposed to the cartoon. However, because of the time lag between publication of the cartoon and book chapter request (the cartoon was published in 2008, the chapter requested in 2012) and a lack of time and finances to provide for extensive fieldwork, an alternative approach was required.

Consequently, I drew on existing interview data from previous work with the cartoonist and an accessible repository of public responses through the online comment sections of the cartoonist’s and newspapers’ webpages. These postings were identified, archived and subject to discourse and content analysis in order to explore the range of audience responses in relation to debates around democracy, citizenship, race, gender and violence (cf. Hammett 2010). The constraints of time and money were key factors in determining how this research was conducted and imposed limitations on the data collected and conclusions made (not least regarding whose voices were being considered and who was able/chose to participate in online exchanges in particular forums). This work was, nonetheless, able to develop a first, albeit partial, engagement with popular sentiments towards the cartoons and the ideologies and political sentiments mobilized.

Dan: 2. With a senior colleague, I designed a 12-month research project addressing citizenship education in South Africa. This work represented a step-change both for my own research away from race and identities in South Africa, and my colleague’s work on citizenship in the US. The process began with a series of (in)formal conversations about research interests and the need for me to secure a research grant as my existing fixed-term contract was coming to an end. Questions emerged from these discussions as to how current citizenship education policy and practice envisaged ‘good’ citizenship in the post-apartheid state and how school teachers and communities engaged with these ideals. From this starting point, we began a literature search to identify both key sources on citizenship education and relating to education and citizenship in South Africa. We compiled a bibliography of potential sources and constructed a library of journal articles and book chapters and began reading. Informed both by our previous research experience and the literature, we began to write the justification and context for the research as well as identifying the specific questions we wanted to address. Once these questions were known, we were then able to identify the kind of data to be collected and the most appropriate methods to do this (interviews, focus groups, ethnographic methods). We also identified the most appropriate funding option for the research, which provided a maximum budget for us to work to. With this constraint in mind, we began to develop the details of the method – the number of provinces to work in, the number of schools to work in within each province, how long to work in each school – while also thinking through specifics in relation to which urban area and then which schools to approach in each province, identifying contacts for ethics approval from each province’s education department as well as at each school, the teachers we would want to speak to (specific subject areas of most relevance) and any other relevant parties we wanted to engage with.

Dan: 3. When I was contemplating the research focus for my MSc dissertation, my interest was piqued by an article in the popular press reporting on Cuban doctors and teachers working overseas as part of their government’s agenda of ‘international solidarity’. This report prompted me to begin searching for academic research on this topic. I found little of direct relevance, suggesting this research would be original. Broader engagements with the literature provided a frame to the project and guided the decisions regarding more specific research questions to be addressed. At this stage, a country-specific interest in South Africa conveniently coincided with the presence of Cuban doctors working in South Africa as part of the international solidarity agenda. This helped focus the questions to be asked (and thus the methods to be used) and to inform considerations of logistical considerations and access to/availability of potential research participants.

As these examples demonstrate, research projects are conceived of and designed in various ways. On occasion, the research design begins with an overarching theme which is broken down into a specific focus and then into research questions that determine the data required and the methods needed. Other projects are designed with an awareness of specific limitations to methods or data from the outset, meaning the questions to be addressed are – to an extent – dictated by these concerns. While there are many differences between each of the examples above, there are a number of commonalities: appropriate methods are used to provide the relevant data to address the research questions identified, the research logistics (of costs, time, travel, ethics, risk) are considered from the early stages of the research design, and existing literature plays a vital role in the design process.

When progressing through these decisions it is important to reflect on the material and emotio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I Planning development research
• PART II Collecting and analyzing data
• PART III Presenting and writing up research
• References
• Index