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III RESEARCH METHODS
Instruments
The data were gathered employing the same questionnaires and
inventories as two years ago (Tenjović, Knežević, Opačić et al. 2001)
except that the general questionnaire was modified by exclusion of
some questions and by inclusion of several new questions related to
the PrIDPs` position on return to homeland. Therefore, the following
instruments were included in the research:
1. General Questionnaire designed by the IAN research team
provided data on the sociodemographic characteristics of the
examinees (gender, age, nationality, marital status, number of
family members, number of children, type of the place of origin
/town-village/), their educational level, occupation and
employability (working ability), their current financial and living
conditions (employment, monthly income per family member, type
of accommodation in exile, need for humanitarian aid, satisfaction
with the humanitarian aid received, self-estimate of current living
condition), and their current mental health status (need to talk
with a professional due to psychological difficulties, use of
tranquillisers, self-estimate of current psychological condition).
The separate section of the general questionnaire was designed to
explore examinees' views related to return and to the factors that
have impact on decision making process about the return to home
area (interest for events in the home area, most frequently used
sources of information about homeland, frequency of visits to the
homeland, maintenance of contacts with persons of the same as
well as other nationalities who live in the place of origin of the
displacees, personal readiness to return, conditions required for
return, having a plan to return in the near future, estimation of the
importance of certain conditions the fulfilling of which could
facilitate the process of reaching a decision on return to
homeland).
2. Life event check list (LECL), designed by the IAN
research team, is employed for assessing the extensity of
exposure to extremely stressful life events. It comprises a list of
17 extremely stressful life events. The examinee checks each
event according to the following scale: "It happened to me", "I
have witnessed it", "I have learned from somebody else’s
experience", "I am not certain" or "It is irrelevant for me".
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