PhD thesis Title Page Final _Richard Juma - Victoria University ...

in reciprocal claims and social networks, and thereby tie his family and
clan with other families and clans. Due to these traditional beliefs,
however, it became prudent to engage a female research assistant
whenever I wanted to interview a female informant. This is because women
respondents would be most reluctant to respond to my questions when I
was accompanied by only the male interpreters.
Overall, due to these difficulties in talking to women as a male researcher,
women were underrepresented in the research. Only 7 women were
interviewed compared to 87 men. Therefore, I feel that the results and
observations of this study may be male biased, as there is a possibility that
the perceptions of the men who were interviewed might dominate
responses. The results may have been different if more women were
interviewed, for their social networks and views regarding household
livelihood strategies may have been different from the men. It should also
be noted that the respondents were adults and younger people, such as
teenagers, were not included largely because they are not involved in
household decision making and because they would not have had
experience of previous times of hardship and famine in the same way that
older people had.
Despite this possible bias towards men and adults, however, I believe that
the interviews conducted were intensive and extensive enough to answer
my research questions. The interviews with women did not reveal
significantly different responses from the men and, in terms of
understanding the decisions made by households in response to famine; it
was the male (and adult) view that was critical because it is they who
dominate decision making.
I was also positioned at my research sites as a Kenyan, educated and from
a western country. This background seemed to have influenced the
interviews in many positive ways, mainly by being close to my informants.
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