Plate 9.5: Gas Welders Working along Madzindadzi Road
3.6 Data Collection Methods, Tools and Techniques
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sampling was employed to ascertain main respondents. Key respondents were taken from the ZIMRA, banks, micro-finance institutions, Harare City Council, and MSME. Upon approaching these organisations, it was much easier to ascertain the key respondents because references were made to individuals who are mandated to handle urban informality issues.
After designing the database according to identified user needs, planning practitioners were purposefully selected to provide feedback on the implication of the database on planning law.
Among the six selected practitioners were one High Court of Zimbabwe judge (who handled planning law cases since 2004 when she was a judge at the Administrative Court), selected town planning assessors with the Administrative Court, and former Deputy Director of the Department of Physical Planning (DPP) in Zimbabwe. These planning experts were selected since they are daily exposed to planning related issues. As such, they have experience and expertise in handling and interpreting planning law.
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ethnographic study that extended over approximately four years. Since then Mupostori became the researcher’s contact person in Gazaland.
Transcended walks in Gazaland proved important in identifying practical realities as they occurred. In the two years before the onset of the current study, the observation was unstructured and unsystematic. In spontaneous interaction with manufacturers, as a customer, it was only out of interest that trends of behaviour were observed and diarised as they unfolded without revealing it to manufacturers. No effort was made to seek for special consent or bother to reveal this because it was just a record of daily contact with different manufacturers and not for academic purpose or else. The researcher remembers a set of notes dated 14 March 2014, titled ‘notes taken one day in a brake moulding workshop’. This method, termed participant observation, enabled ease of collection of rich, relational data about informal manufacturers in their natural setting (Saunders et al. 2009).
Upon embarking on the research on compilation of all-inclusive data on informal manufacturing, it was realised that the greater part of the data that was observed during the first part indirectly answered the research question of the current study. This realisation ignited researcher’s interest to note whether observed realities were uniform across all informal manufacturing sites in Harare. This gave rise to the collective observation of manufacturers in Gazaland, Siyaso and the Complex for easy generalisation of study findings. At this stage, the approach was changed into structured and systematic observation for another two years. During these years, manufacturers were observed with informed consent after revealing the researcher’s identity and they (manufacturers) quickly accepted and expressed unconditional keenness to be involved in the research following the relationship and trust that had developed during the first phase. For Gazaland it was so easy to enter the study site because of existing
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long-lasting relations. Through references and links from participants in Gazaland home industry it was easy to establish points of entry into Siyaso and the Complex.
During the second phase of collective observation, an observation checklist was designed in line with study objectives. This design was partly enabled by themes of what was observed during the two years of unstructured and unsystematic observation. Emphasis was placed on specifying and clarifying issues observed in the first two years. The observation checklist was made use of to capture behavioural and compositional fundamentals in informal manufacturing, and the trade-flow network that weave different operators’ activities together.
To help remember important events and subsequently tell stories, the photography technique captured important events.
3.6.2 In−depth Interviews with Key Respondents
One-on-one in-depth interviews with representatives from the Harare City Council, ZIMRA, banks, micro-finance institutions, and the MSME were undertaken. Their strong interest in informality issues better positions them to spell out the sort of data they want from the informal trade sector. Emphasis was placed on specifying follow-up and probing questions. This helped in getting the interviewees clarify their data needs and in what way they intend to use the data.
To navigate through assumed positive association between informal operators, unstructured interviews with influential operators were conducted. Through references from at least five players working at a certain site (see Section 3.5.4), influential players in home industries were established. For example, at Siyaso in Mbare, special consent to interact with manufacturers had to be granted by an influential player before getting close contact with individual players.
It has been observed that some influential individuals arise spontaneously as people associate
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together (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005). Such individuals are custodians of informal institutions.
Other key respondents happen to be operators who have worked and or are living in an area over a lengthy period. Through referrals such individuals were sought for interviews.
Six planning practitioners were interviewed to give comments on the implications of compiled data on planning law in Zimbabwe. Such interviews were structured to first give background information on the study’s purpose, data gathered and field experiences. Following this background narration, questions were then modelled on the implications of study discoveries on subdivision and consolidation, key and local planning, development control and public participation. These were informal interviews to give practitioners room to comment without limit. Short notes were jotted down during interviews, and then expanded and structured after individual interviews.
3.6.3 Tailor−Made Mobile−Based Geo−Application
A customised android mobile geo-application based on Geographic Position System (GPS) was developed by a data scientist specifically for use in data gathering for the survey of informal industry in Harare. This mobile application was cloud-hosted to enable instant interaction between the mobile devices and server. As an enumerator pressed the final submit button after a structured interview with a participant, research data were transferred instantly to the central server. The mobile geo-application was also designed in a way that it captured and stored the respondent’s data (including geographical location) whilst offline and then automatically upload it to the main server when internet connectivity was available. This helped in accurately mapping spatial pattern of informal trading activities during internet connectivity disruption with minimal delay.
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The tailor-made mobile geo-application embedded a digital, semi-structured questionnaire and which was loaded on android mobile devices of ten enumerators. This questionnaire was self- administered to all manufacturers in three sites over three days. Data on informal manufacturers’ behavioural reaction to the proposed measure by the GoZ to have the informal trade sector taxed the informal trade sector, and whether this behavioural reaction is expressed by informal manufacturers’ psychographics (their knowledge, attitude and perception) in interpretation of principles of town planning was captured using scenario-based questions on a scale of one to five (appendix six). The questionnaire also captured data on socio-economic demographics, number of employees, their legal standing where registration is concerned, level of tax compliance, sources of raw supplies and their target market.
3.6.4 Content Analysis
Content analysis is defined as the technique of extracting important facts and derives themes from existing data (Saunders et al. 2009). Secondary data to partly address the research problem was gathered using literature review and document analysis. In both instances, content analysis was employed to peruse, skim, collate and generate themes from existing literature and administrative documents. Relevant literature was identified using key word search (for example, informal manufacturing and database development) and subsequently perusing abstracts of various published works on informal manufacturing. Literature review was used as the main evoker of experiences in informality, planning law and learning platform for applications of spatial statistics. The review of literature was done in three key parts. The first comprised theoretical and analytical literature on urban informality. The second provided a brief planning law review with specific prominence on the philosophy that led to the institution of planning standards, regulations, processes and procedures. The third segment of the review comprised literature on spatial statistics; particularly how variables for spatial statistical
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Secondary data for use in analysing and clarifying issues in parliament acts, statutory instruments, and statutory plans guiding informal trade sector in Zimbabwe was gathered using document analysis. To better the understanding of the suggested tax measure by government (taxing the informal sector), Sections 395 to 400 of the mid-term fiscal review of 2014 was analysed. The RTCPA [Chapter 29:12], SI 216 (use group regulations) of 1994, and the layout plan for Harare city were analysed to better the understanding of spatial requirements of the informal sector.