Eastern Zone DCSA

household observations were lost. Heliwaa was a major hot spot
and particularly volatile at the time of the data collection. On 18 th
February, 2014 the District Commissioner stated in a press
conference that they were losing ground to Al-Shabaab - insurgent
groups were taking full control of the district at night (during the
initial days of the data collection people were still fleeing from this
district to other more secure areas of Mogadishu).
With this in mind and after thorough consultations with local actors,
including other research institutes, the team was advised not to
collect data from this district as the probability of coming into
harm’s way was deemed too high. This resulted in the team being
unable to collect data from 83 households as planned for this
district.
Across all the districts in the Eastern Zone many of the research
participants gave superficial answers to security, conflict and
violence related questions that did not seem to reflect the reality on
the ground – as previously mentioned many respondents were
cautious of providing a truer picture of the district. Researchers
have emphasised the qualitative data in the analysis phases to
mitigate against potentially inaccurate findings in the quantitative
data collection.
Qualitative Limitations
Most of the local authorities did not have enough time to be
interviewed due to their busy schedules and the researchers could
not probe deeper into issues raised. Secondly, some groups were
not willing to engage openly in the discussion and were slightly
dubious of speaking freely amongst the FGDs, though discussion
moderators tried to mitigate this by making the discussion more
informal and friendly. Focus Group Discussion participants would,
after a time, open up about the true situation in their district and
provide the data collectors with what was deemed to be a more
accurate picture of the areas under discussion.
Finally, researchers used a mixed method approach in order for the
qualitative and quantitative data to allow for research
complementarity. The two datasets were not captured without
some challenges, especially inconsistencies between the data
provided by the survey respondents and the information captured
during focus group discussions and key informant interviews -
particularly the questions related to safety.
Lastly, most household respondents could not easily understand or
differentiate roles played by different public institutions such as the
courts, police, military, regional authority and district authority and
most of the respondents were speculating on roles and
responsibilities - adversely impacting on the accuracy of the
information being provided.
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