CHAPTER THREE: Methods of data collection and analysis 3.1 Introduction
3.5 The ethnographic research process
“Ethnography usually refers to forms of social research having…strong emphasis on exploring the nature of particular social phenomenon, rather than setting out to test hypotheses about them” (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994, p. 248). The social phenomena I explored were the everyday literacy practices of rural people in Bweyale. I worked with unstructured data and investigated small cases in detail. Analysis of data involved explicit interpretation of the meanings and functions of literacy as discerned in literacy events unfolding in the daily lives of the community. In presenting the findings from these methods, I used verbal descriptions and explanations of the literacy practices that I observed in Bweyale; there are no calculations and statistical analysis in this study (see
Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994). Although I prepared very detailed interview schedules and observations tools, they were used much more like guidelines and in general, data collection and analysis were unstructured and not based on a pre-designed tool. I also had no pre-given categories for grouping the data. Data were collected in natural settings in real life activities as they unfolded in the daily life of the community (see Hammersley, 1990). Although I allowed the data to shape the findings, a re-examination of my original plan shows that, the difference between what I set out to do and what came out from following the outcome of data analysis in the field was small. This was because I had conducted a preliminary study in another rural area in Uganda (Openjuru, Forthcoming) Different tools were designed corresponding to the different methods of collecting data.
These were observations, interviews, and documentary analysis guides (see Appendix 3).
Visual ethnography and documentary photography were used to capture information in visual form for analysis. These tools were used as guides during data collection in the initial days. As themes started emerging at the later stages of data collection, the interviews and observations became more focused on particular themes that were generated from analysing the data collected during the general interviews and
observations phase. The process of moving from the general to the specific is explained in the following sections below. The process was not restricted to the questions that were on the guides because pertinent information that came up during the course of interviews was equally pursued.
3.5.1 Securing the co-operation of the community
In keeping with the ethnographic research process, I started by gaining access to this community. To do that, I sought clearance from the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST). I used this clearance to approach the Masindi district local government authorities to seek permission to do research in their district. The permission from the district authorities was used to approach the local leaders in the community and inform them about my intention to undertake a study in their community and to seek their co-operation in the process. Finally, with permission from the local leaders, I went about getting the co-operation of the community and the people I was purposively selecting to participate in the study as key informants. I explained to the participants why it was important to study literacy in the day-to-day lives of people in a particular community. I also explained what their role in the process was and how important this role was in understanding literacy in their everyday lives.
It was not difficult for me to gain access in this community because I was familiar with the dominant culture and language in this community, because I belong to the same culture and speak two dialects with ease: Acholi and Alur, both dialects of the Luo language that is commonly used in this community.
Although I described myself as an insider in terms of the dominant culture and language of the community, I was at the same time an outsider in terms of my social status, education and my position as researcher. Secondly, although I had relatives in the community/research area, I was not a daily member of this community before the research began. It was the first time I had lived in this area. Whatever the case, being a cultural insider (Ganga & Scott, 2006) put me in a double role of insider/outsider in the research process which is what consolidated my position as participant observer
(Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994). Nonetheless, this ambivalence meant that I had to keep negotiating between the two positions of researcher and participant in the action. For example, retreating to take field notes and being on the lookout for literacy events to follow up while at the same time keeping my participation as natural as possible were some of the negotiations I had to endure during the research process (cf. section 3.5.2 below). The theoretical lens which I adopted for the study enabled me to see more than I was able to see in ordinary life experience. I believe this guaranteed the objectivity of my observation as an insider and confirmed my outsider status as a researcher. The other advantage of being a cultural insider was that it afforded me some degree of social proximity and a measure of unity with the respondents (Ganga & Scott, 2006; Merriam, Ntseane, Lee, Kee, & Johnson-Baily, 2000). I had free access to the research participants including their homes and shared life with them without appearing to be artificial due to my being a cultural insider. On the downside my outsider status as an educated person and researcher could have influenced their response to me in relation to their
understanding and benefits of literacy in relation to education (see also Papen, 2005a).
3.5.2 Extended residence in the community
After gaining access, I stayed in the community for one year. The extended stay enabled me to conduct participant observations of literacy events that were unfolding naturally in the everyday life of this community (Adler & Adler, 1994; Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994; Hammersley, 1990).
During my stay, I became integrated into the everyday life of the community. I made friends, I was a neighbour, and I had relatives and friends who visited me and I visited them too. I participated in community activities like going to church and attending social
meetings, participating in social functions, buying food from the market, sharing meals and drinks together and hanging out with the boys watching football and arguing over favourite teams. In participating in these activities, I was retreating to take field notes of significant literacy events that I was noticing and identifying people for further interview.
Once in the community, I used participant observation, in-depth interviews, documentary analysis, visual ethnography and documentary photography to collect data on literacy practices in this community. In the coming section the basics of these methods and how they were applied to collect data will be explained.
3.5.3 Participant observation
Participant observation was a key technique of data collection. I describe my observation as participant observation because, although there are many forms of participant
observation with several degrees of involvement that can be distinguished (see Bryman, 2001; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Hammersley, 1990), as Atkinson and Hammersley (1994) argue, the meaning of participant observation can be difficult to pin down. They point out some of the distinctions being made between participant and non-participant observation, when they say:
Although it is important to recognise the variation to be found in the roles adopted by the observer, this simple dichotomy is not very useful, not least because it seems to imply that the non-participant observer plays no recognised role at all. This can be the case but it need not be. More subtle is the widely used fourfold typology: complete observer, observer as participant, participant as observer and complete participant… Moreover, it has been argued that in a sense all social research is a form of participant observation, because we cannot study the social world without being part of it (Atkinson &
Hammersley, 1994, pp. 248-249).
True to Atkinson and Hammersley’s (1994) conclusion, during the process of collecting data I was completely immersed in the community’s way of life and became part of it.
They knew that I was conducting research on reading and writing and I participated in a number of community activities as a member of the community for the period I was in this community. My observations were naturalistic as Adler and Adler (1994, p. 378) explain in support of Atkinson and Hammersley (1994) when they argue that:
Qualitative observation is fundamentally naturalistic in essence; it occurs in the natural context of occurrence, among the actors who would naturally be participating in the interaction, and follows the natural stream of everyday life. As such, it enjoys the advantage of drawing the observer into the phenomenological complexity of the world.
Therefore, I did not do a pure detached, unobtrusive and non-interventionist kind of observation only possible under controlled research settings. I was part of the daily life (world) I was participating in while at the same time observing the goings on in literacy in this community. I asked for explanations and sought clarification about literacy events
that I was observing. I was very visible to the people I was observing and some of the research subjects were conscious participants in this research process. They were willing to explain to me how they use reading and writing with the full knowledge that the information was needed for the purpose of this study. This involvement and visibility on both my side and the community’s, ruled out the use of non-participant observation.
Portalli’s (1991, p. 31) description of the interview process as “mutual sighting (in which) one party cannot really (see) the other unless the other can see him in return,” summarises how I used the observation method in this study.
The use of participant observation focused on identifying and studying literacy events that were taking place in the day-to-day lives of the community members. The observations were recorded visually by taking photographs of some literacy events, in addition to taking field notes on what was being observed. The observations covered literacy events in both private and public space and different literacy domains in the day-to-day lives of the community such as homes, markets, trading centres etc. The observations were continued until the point of theoretical saturation from observing one particular situation was achieved. This was the point where continued observation of one particular situation was bringing in no more new data (Bryman, 2001).
Typical of unstructured and naturalistic research, the observations were spontaneous as and when significant literacy events were noticed or something from an interview seemed to require follow up using observation methods. Some observations generated information that was followed up through in-depth interviews. In this way, the methods triangulated and complemented each other. For example, the realisation that religion was a common theme arising from interviews motivated a need to observe how people behaved in the church and during church related activities. This church observation led to interviews with the parish priest of the church and further participation and observation of church meetings that were organised after the formal church services. Generally, selection of people for interviews or sites for observation depended on the outcome of data analysis.
Detail of how the data analysis was conducted is provided in section 3.6 below.
3.5.4 General observation of community life
To conduct the observations and to identify other issues to concentrate on, I spent the initial days of fieldwork collecting general information about the social-economic structure of the community. The information collected included how different groups of people (children, adults, working people, business people, farmers, women, men, youths and elders) in the community lived their everyday lives. Other information included the
settlement patterns of the community, which groups of people lived where and why, the economic activities people were engaged in or what they did to earn their living (selling in the market, shops, farming, and artisans). Social activities like going to church, social interaction during leisure time and participation in community social events such as welcoming and important public figure to the community were observed. I conducted this information gathering using unstructured observation of life in the community as it is naturally lived by its members (see Erben, 1998). The objective of this was to generate the patterns and structure from the data.
As members of one community, people perform different roles and belong to different but overlapping subsections of community life. From the general information gathered, the different social and economic groups were identified (See Bryman, 2001; Glaser &
Strauss, 1967 for details of this process). These different groups were farmers,
shopkeepers, employees of government (like the police) and of NGOs (like community development workers). The detailed activities of these different groups of people are presented in Chapter Five.
3.5.5 Identification of literacy events and domains
An ethnographic study emphasises the examination of phenomena as they naturally occur.
After mapping out the community as explained in 3.5.4 above, analysis of the data collected revealed the most noticeable domains of literacy in the community. These included livelihood practices, education, religion, bureaucracy, households, and personal uses of reading and writing skills. The literacy events taking place within these domains became the focus of my investigation.
I made regular observations of these everyday literacy events taking place in the different literacy domains in rural community life, taking field notes about what was observed, listening to talk around texts, and photographing some of the literacy evidence in the community and some of the activities in which reading and writing was involved. I also participated in those events as a member of the community. Examples of some of the social events observed included welcoming the paramount chief of the Acholi people to Bweyale, examination of a new radio, transactions taking place in shops, drug shops, bars, restaurants and tailor shops. I also observed a community meeting being held in the school, and a church meeting planning for construction and family life in three different homes. I was a regular and accepted visitor in these households. I also observed the activities taking place in some institutions like the police station and the local council offices. In the process of participating in the Sunday church services (in both the
Protestant and Catholic churches), I documented the literacy involved in the process of the Sunday services. I also monitored the use of information posted in public places, the activities around the newsvendor shop and those selling both newspapers and magazines in the community.
In some of these events, I was a participant. For example, I documented the literacy practice involved in the purchase of my bicycle. This list is endless, and some of the observations were not just done once but several times with the intention of identifying patterns. All these activities were grouped into those related to livelihood practices or the economic life of the community; those related to education, those related to law and order in the community and the religious life of the community. These were the different domains of literacy in the life of the community.
I did not use any systematic procedures to identify the literacy events and domains to be observed (Atkinson, and Hammersley, 1994). Initially this was a spontaneous and non- purposive process meant to understand all aspects of literacy in Bweyale. From this general observation of the different aspects of literacy, specific instances of literacy activities were followed up for detailed investigation (Bryman, 2001; Glaser & Strauss, 1967).
The focus was on understanding the local literacy practices of the community. It was not about individuals who were not able to read and write, but how literacy was used in the community by both those who are literate and non-literate. This does not mean that individual actors were not important. They were important as players in the collective processes and contexts of community life. The study therefore collected data from individuals as contributors to what made up the day-to-day life of the community as a whole. Each individual represented different aspects of everyday community life.
3.5.6 In-depth/biographical interviews
I conducted in-depth/biographical interviews with people belonging to different sections of the community, such as elders, women, youths, shopkeepers, teachers, police officers, community development workers etc. The biographical method is sometimes treated as one of the methods used in ethnography, but it is also a method of data collection in its own right. This method is sometimes referred to as the "life history method." It is similar to in-depth interviews since they both use unstructured and structured interviewing (see Bryman, 2001, pp. 310, 316). The main difference between the two is in the different time frame adopted by each. In this study, I adopted a mix of the two methods. This was because I was interested in understanding the current literacy practices that is, how the
individuals use their reading and writing skills in their everyday lives. To understand the present, required an understanding of some biographical data, for example, how and why they learnt or could not learn how to read and write. The biographical backgrounds of the respondents were important to understand how they learnt how to read and how long they stayed at school where reading and writing is mostly learnt.
The use of interviews had both general and specific purposes for this study. The general purpose was to provide insight into the nature, value, and meaning of literacy in the community as expressed in the lives of the selected individuals. This was because individuals are part of the cultural network of the community (See Erben, 1998; Smith, 1994). Their way of life is a product of the community’s culture that shapes their
behaviour as much as their behaviours are expressions of the same culture. Therefore, the best way to understand the wider community was by studying a few selected individuals in this community.
The specific reason was to understand the literacy in the day-to-day life of the individuals in a manner that would facilitate understanding the literacy practices in the community (See Erben, 1998; Smith, 1994). This helped to understand the literacy practices of individuals as members of the larger community. The selected individuals were asked to relate their personal life history to help formulate some ideas about their present literacy practices. I did this by interviewing them and spending long periods with some of them as they went about the day-to-day activities of their lives.
Two types of interviews were conducted: an in-depth/biographical interview with selected key informants and short spontaneous interviews. I recorded the first type of interviews on tape and handwritten notes as considered appropriate and acceptable by the informant.
This was negotiated with the participant prior to the interview. The audio recordings were transcribed in the language in which the interview was conducted. The interview
transcripts were then subjected to different forms of analysis as I explain in 3.6 below.
The short and spontaneous interviews were less extended interviews conducted to seek clarification or get additional information from some research participants. The selection of subjects for the less extended interviews was spontaneous depending on the literacy events needing closer attention and more details to understand them. In such cases, some of the participants in such literacy events were interviewed. These interviews were recorded as supplementary field notes.
For the in-depth/biographical interviews, informants were selected and in-depth interviews conducted to get information about their use of reading and writing in their