Development
Africa
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Ethnicity and Inequality in Namibia Traditional Medicine in Africa Gender Training and Research Programme (GTRP/ UNAM) Medical Sociology /Anthropology Workbook
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  There
is more to conducting research than going out to a community and asking
a few questions. Planning good research is time consuming. The pictures
above show a research assistant mapping out where each interview will be
conducted based on the research sampling procedure. The maps shows the
use of a stratified systematic sample to select households where interviews
will be conducted.
Sometimes respondents are asked to fill in a questionnaire. No matter how the data are collected, typing in fieldnotes or entering data into the computer takes a long time.
The workbook presented on this page was originally written for sociology for nurses - but has been revised for all students who wish to learn social science research methods. Please note that the original workbook was prepared for the University of Namibia, Centre for External Studies and should be referenced as such. Please note that this is A REVISED DRAFT of the final workbook. Final editing for the 1998 version was done at the Centre for External Studies, although this version has also been revised for use on my website; however, it still uses British English spelling and refers to original textbooks which may not be available to you. This workbook can only be used for educational purposes and must acknowledge the University of Namibia, Centre for External Studies as the original publisher and Dr. Debie LeBeau as the author. This workbook should be referenced as: LeBeau, Debie. 2009. Social Research
Methods. REVISED from UNAM/CES original draft. UNAM/CES: Windhoek.
Namibian ex-fighters and their families fifteen years after Independence This internet book investigates the post-independence situation of those who fought on both sides of the Namibian liberation war. The findings are being used to develop community based, empowerment driven interventions aimed at improving the quality of life for ex-fighters and their families. The research was funded by the Brot fuer die Welt. Data from this research indicate that 15 years after the Namibian war for independence, ex-fighters still exhibit symptoms of long-term psychological distress with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The findings indicate there is a correlation between the life circumstances of ex-fighters and their lack of resilience to traumatic war experiences, with resiliency being linked to a number of protective factors such as the socio-economic situation of the survivors, their socio-political environment, their social support networks and their cognitive processes. It is argued that in the case of Namibian ex-fighters, long term psychological distress is different from a simple PTSD diagnosis because the survivor has almost invariably gone almost two decades without seeking treatment. Moreover, during this time, the ex-fighter has also been exposed to additional social and psychological stressors which, for a person not suffering from long-term psychological distress would only have a fleeting impact, but for a sufferer of long-term psychological distress, each life incident could reduce the survivor's resilience to trauma as well as triggering ‘flashbacks’. Click here to go to the PEACE Centre's site for a full copy of this text
For other publications not found on this website
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Sometimes
the research methodology calls for audio recording interviews (such as
with these street children), while other times a form interview is conducted
or a questionnaire is formally administered. No matter how the data are
collected, there must checks at every step to ensure that 'research bias'
does not creep into the data and thereby bias our findings.
