Capacity Building Of Local Researchers In Sirca-Funded ICT For Development (ICT4D) Project In Bangladesh
Bangladesh
November 14, 2009
Contributed by: Mahfuz Ashraf (SIRCA Grant Awardee)
It was a bright sunny day but the office of Brainstorm Bangladesh seemed brighter due to the presence of seven young local researchers. A seminar titled ‘Qualitative Research: Introduction & Approaches’ was arranged for the research assistants, who were going to collect data for the SIRCA research project. These local researchers came from the villages of Manikganj where Grameen Phone Community Information Center (GPCIC) is in operation. They came from remote villages with educational background not over graduate level.
After the commencement of the project in February 2009, one of the main research dimensions was to involve the local researchers, employ their contextual understanding, and develop their research capacity. The research focuses on assessment of development impact of ICT intervention in rural areas at micro (community) level in Bangladesh; a developing setting. One of the major difficulties regarding these research projects is trying to determine the contextual factors and little focus is given to societal factors that result in less emphasis on the root level users’ actual demand. Moreover, the project employs an interpretive approach. Interpretive researchers interact constantly with the study subject and surrounding context; so they may encounter the following challenges while gaining understanding of the subject (the human process):
- Social-cultural problems
- Accommodation problems
- Difficulty in understanding the local dialects
- Communication gaps
- Participants’ feeling of not being aligned
- Feeling of being alienated
Therefore, the involvement of local researchers is the best way to overcome these challenges and understand the real development perceptions from the intervention’s end user perspective. In the ICT4D impact research, development issues have to be contextual in order to find out the actual impact from the end users’ perspective. In addition, academicians and researchers think results should not be isolated from the social context. Participants’ view of development can be better understood by using local researchers.
In September 28, 2009, the SIRCA Research Mentor, Dr. Roger Harris visited GPCIC in Manikganj and suggested creating and building the capacity of local researchers. To explore the maximum outcome, we invited the researchers to a qualitative research orientation conducted by Project Investigator, Dr. Md. Mahfuz Ashraf and also to share research experiences. The topics discussed in the seminar were:
- Introduction to SIRCA research
- Presentation on research methodology
- Qualitative research tools (interview, observation and focus group discussion)
- How to write village profile
After the seminar, the local researchers went to their village and conducted a pilot study on GPCIC study site. They conducted some interviews, wrote transcripts and village profiles. The access to resources like computer and internet connectivity is very limited in their villages but still these researchers utilize the minimal resources in the most efficient way. For instance, one of the researchers Md. Rokon sketched the village map, scanned the image and e-mailed it to us. He also interviewed his uncle and sent the participant’s photographs.
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| Local researchers interviewed participants. Researchers are also from the same place as the participants. | |
It is argued that access to field-level data is always difficult in ICT for Development (ICT4D) research especially for those who are researching in western countries. So, these local researchers can be a source of obtaining end users’ data and transcripts (local language to English) to offshore researchers, which will ultimately lower the research cost and time.