3.3 Information gathering process with workforce/popular group
3.3.1 Situational analysis survey
That promising beginning aside, there were still numerous challenges to deciding where to begin and with whom to begin. From my own experience, I knew something of the pressure Africans can feel to say what they think Westerners want to hear. I also knew how easily I could accidentally stifle conversation with them simply by speaking too quickly, posing closed rather than open-ended questions, or generally being more direct and assertive than they were customarily. Additionally, I was familiar with Frierian teaching techniques that emphasize starting from what people know and building upon that.11 If I picked out the problems I saw as demonstrable of viewpoint discrepancies, I might not identify the problems that Zambian workers saw. So it seemed imperative to begin at a point of Zambians' choosing rather than my own. I had further been advised that Zambians were
"allergic" to paper questionnaires and surveys because these connoted past government
9 MEF's director was also a crucial advisor especially early in the fieldwork process.
10 This did not thoroughly allay suspicions and concerns. According to my research assistants and other trusted Zambian colleagues, some suspicions arose simply from the nature of the inquiry itself. Since the study took seriously ideas and concepts not associated with modernity and the West, there were occasions when participants appeared truly puzzled—and therefore hesitant—as to why we were interested in the subjects we discussed. Towards the end of the fieldwork, one of my research assistants said it was as if we had gone into people's homes and they had offered us the best of whatever they had there but we said, "No. We are interested in the trash you have thrown out back."
11 Frierian methods were used heavily in MEF's curriculum, especially classics such as the Training for Transformation Series. See Anne Hope and Sally Timmel, Training for Transformation: a Handbook for Community Workers (London: ITDG Publishers, 1999).
efforts at control and monitoring. Whatever was done would have to be conducted orally, in the vernacular, and informally.
It should now be obvious that this was not the sort of research a white, American, non-Bemba speaking female could conduct on her own. So I was extremely fortunate to have two young Zambian men—Enock and Lubasi—who worked with me from this point onwards and who are described in greater detail below.
Ultimately, I decided to adapt a technique that had been used in setting up the HIV/AIDS program of the Anglican Church in South Africa. This, I learned later from the person who designed it, was based on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Neuro-linguistic programming is said to deal "with the structure of human subjective experience." It assumes that human behavior arises from how we experience the world through our senses and that we use language to order our thoughts.13 Further, neuro-linguistic programming understands that our beliefs act as perceptual filters and that qualities of curiosity and open interest are more effective when approaching others than are simply our acting on assumptions about them.14
Deciding that simplicity and openness would be best, we settled on having Enock, my principal research assistant, do a small random survey within the mining compounds. This
12 Joseph O'Connor and John Seymour, Introducing Neuro-Linguistic Programming: Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People (San Francisco: Thorsons Publishers, Harper Collins), 3. Although this introductory book appears to suggest that knowledge of NLP can be useful in getting other people to do what we want them to, that is not the part of the whole that I want to emphasize here. It is also interesting to see that O'Connor and Seymour use map imagery when discussing how people make sense of their worlds, but they do not appear to be familiar with Schutz's work on the subject.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., 5-6. The Church of the Province of South Africa had used this model when designing what was intended to be a culturally appropriate way of doing HIV/AIDS education and prevention. They wanted to begin by getting an assessment of the current situation, or a situational analysis. Asking South Africans what they saw, felt, and heard allowed them to speak from a plane of sensory experience and perception. The designer/director of that program also noted that sensory related questions can yield very different answers than can cerebrally related questions. When people talk about what they feel, they are generally more genuine;
asking people what they think gives them time to devise "acceptable" answers. The designer/director of the program also said they used the technique because "it got us out of being white people."
survey consisted of two questions. They were a sensory question: 1) "Regarding the mines, what do you see happening around you?" and a cerebral question: 2) "Why do you think these things are happening?" We also conducted these brief interviews in disparate locations as a way of gauging the broadness or narrowness of concerns expressed and to guard against respondents conferring with each other before participating. As a further guard against overly influencing people's responses, I did not share with my research assistant in great detail my own ideas or specific points of focus for the study. He knew broad generalities only.
We originally intended to take a large sample: begin with 50 participants and see how wide ranging or how uniform their answers were, then make a decision about what to do next. After 20 interviews,15 Enock remarked that it was as if everyone lived in the same house. The uniformity of responses was quite remarkable. And, as the study unfolded, we received repeated corroboration of findings first expressed in this little situational analysis survey.
In retrospect, it probably would have been better to ask more sensory related questions than we did but the survey accomplished two important things. First, it gave us a good starting point: Many people mentioned that they saw mining accidents as on the increase since re-privatization. I was not aware of this sentiment and it would not have occurred to me to pursue that line of inquiry. But, as the next chapter explains, mining accidents made a very good departure point for the investigation. Second, the cerebrally related question gave good testimony to differences between thought based and feelings based responses. When people talked about why they thought things were happening, particularly in relation to accident increases, the responses they gave during the situational
15 A tabulated chart of responses is contained in the appendices.
analysis survey were quite different from what was ultimately expressed as we delved more deeply into the issue later on. This should become clearer in chapters four and five.