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Moderated conference on impact assessment of agricultural research: May 2014

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Thu, 15 May 2014 16:45:21 +0200
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Hello again, Ed Garrett finishing my Fulbright Fellowship at the Hungarian Research Institute of Organic Agriculture.



Specifically to Dr. Tinsley's concern about getting good data from participatory research and post impact assessment dialogues (Message 34), I want to stress that each field of research has its own needs for specialized training.



We do treat validation of data very seriously in ethnographic research by working with interview scripts, having our own questions evaluated by those outside of our research to understand in which direction they are leading. We do know that the act of interviewing changes the ideas of the interview subject, so it is best to treat the interview similar to an educational encounter and understand what is expected, how this is achieved, and the risks involved both to the participants and the research, before starting. That said, we do pick up a lot of information from casual contact that then must be independently validated.



Care in planning of the questions, language, order, and even interview style is used to help control biases. There will still be issues, but this is the case with all research, the better the structure of the research fits the specific needs and objectives, the less of an issue there will be with the impact of bias. Here in Hungary, I have used people unfamiliar with my research and subject matter to translate (from English to Hungarian and Hungarian to English) and to code text responses (i.e. list emerging themes in the statements of multiple respondents). Of course, this work is checked for accuracy, but these keep the researcher from inputting a bias on the answers. Then we keep both the original responses as well as any translations so the process can be checked by others, again, validation.



These are a couple of places where bias of the researcher really shows up as we make active decisions about how to interpret and record the data.  The raw data (original text, recording, etc.) doesn't change, so it can serve as a benchmark for analysis of bias or validation of data (same things from a practical perspective).  If someone is writing down speech from other people (transcription), then the potential exists in this action for bias to enter.  The work I've done in Hungary used electronic forms, so we have the respondent's own words.  Audio recordings of interviews also work to minimize transcription errors as the extra cues such as tone, speech pattern, word choice, etc. is preserved and some research uses video to capture as much extra detail as possible from interviews.



The main idea though is to ensure that no single question is without at least one other validating data point. In interviews, this can be done by asking similar questions "around" the same point of interest to triangulate a response. We might structure the same question in a social context as well as an economic context and also a historical context.



Like every other form of research, this takes practice and training to master and not all are best suited to this style of research. The same is true of participatory or "on-farm" research. We do understand that there is a self-selection bias towards those wanting to see success of the research. With this knowledge, the bias can be controlled for by program design and through careful evaluation. To many, evaluation is the least important and something that is tolerated instead of the place where the program succeeds or fails.



Ed Garrett

Fulbright Fellow - Advancing Organic Agriculture in Hungary 

Hungarian Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (ÖMKi) 

Mikól tér 1.

H-1033 Budapest

Hungary

phone: 06 1 244 8358

e-mail: ed.garrett (at) fulbrightmail.org 

  

[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information, see http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/news/detail/en/c/217706/ ].



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