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

took between two and two and a half hours. Therefore, the questionnaire
had to be shortened. Thirdly, I learnt that some questions were never
answered at all by anybody, while at the same time; particular questions
were popular with everybody. It was also noted that some questions were
not relevant in answering my research question. The questionnaire was
therefore streamlined by removing those questions which were ineffectual.
At least twenty five key questions were identified that had generated useful
data from all the six respondents during the pretesting of the
questionnaire. These questions were used to design a new interview
schedule. The questions were designed in a structured manner but still
interviewees could pursue interesting answers. 60 I utilized the interview
guide approach, making the interviews flexible, conversational and
situational.
It is worth noting here that questions number 25 and 11, under the
household and key informant schedules respectively, were meant to elicit
information about the community perception of wealth and poverty 61 (see
appendix 1 and 2). Since I could not bring the pastoralists together in a
group to discuss their wealth statuses 62, it became very difficult for me to
ask how they differentiated or categorized themselves. All my respondents,
however, volunteered information that was quite relevant to this study.
Initially, I felt that asking each and every respondent directly about
his/her wealth status and that of other members of the community was an
impossible task. Thus I would move around the issue and ask why there
were some families were popular and known by every one, while others
were not. The answer to the question also depended on the household I
was talking to. For example, some households answered the question
60 According to Salkind (2003), interviewees should be allowed to respond to interesting
answers to enable a full exploration of the subject at hand.
61 The study adapts Chambers (1995) definition of poverty as lack of physical necessities,
assets and income.
62 Wealth ranking is normally done through group discussions and assist in getting the
sample. In this study, wealth ranking was not intended for getting the sample, so I got the
information from each and every respondent. Though this was a unique method, the data
acquired was sufficient in answering the question.
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