Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
are expecting any trends to be negative. The question also gives no time-frame,
and may get you secondary opinion as well as personal observation. Instead ask
'Have you noticed any changes in wildlife numbers around the village since the
road came to the area?' Then follow up with an open question 'Can you describe
these changes to me?' Leading questions can be very subtle, and can also be
connected to the respondents' perceptions of your research agenda. It is very
hard for someone who is known to be a conservationist to ask neutrally about
people's views on the conservation of wildlife. People have a tendency to tell you
what they think you want to hear. Training local assistants to administer the
questionnaire may help with this.
●
Jargon.
Don't ask 'What are your main
livelihood activities
in the wet season?' or
'Who are the main
stakeholders
in wildlife hunting?' or 'Could you describe the
wildlife
commodity chain
to me?' You may need to break these questions down to
cover all the subtleties of the definition, or think of another way to approach the
question, such as using a diagram. If a questionnaire has to be translated, it is
even more important to use simple, direct language, to avoid further ambiguity
creeping in during translation.
●
Over-complex questions.
Don't expect people to fill in lots of huge and complicated
matrices (for example, of seasonal livelihood activities). Don't make them do maths
(for example, asking people to assign preference values adding up to 100 to species
that they most like to eat). Over-complex questions will be filled in incorrectly or left
blank, and will put people off answering further questions. On a related note, ques-
tions that are obviously designed to test knowledge are not a good idea, as people feel
uncomfortable being tested. There should be no obviously 'wrong' answers.
3.2.4.3 Direct observation
There are many forms of direct observation data. These might include recording
the number and price of species on sale in a market (Box 3.2), the catch that
hunters bring into the village each evening, the amount of grain in each family's
granary, or the number of consumer goods that a household owns. Following people
as they carry out the activity of interest and recording what they actually do can be
very useful, though it's labour-intensive for you, gives small sample sizes, and is
potentially disruptive for them. Direct observation is an excellent complement to
other data collection methods. It is particularly useful for triangulation of other
data sources (for example, comparing recall data on the price paid for wild meat
with actual market data). Direct observation can be very satisfying. The researcher
may feel that because direct observation data are concrete and collected by them-
selves, they are more valid than data based on the perceptions and opinions of oth-
ers. However, it is important to remember that these data are only as valid as the
researcher's understanding of what is happening. They can be open to misinter-
pretation. For example, the number of animals brought into the village by a hunter
is only a partial count of the number actually killed in the forest, some of which
may have rotted in the snares, escaped wounded, or been eaten by the hunter.
