Work Package 2

Qualitative, quantitative and participatory approaches at household and community level

Data will be collected using a range of qualitative research methods, such as semi-structured interviews, in-depth narrative interviews, oral histories, focus group discussions and observational fieldwork. This approach will be complemented by various interactive and participatory methods, such as multi-criteria ranking exercises (Hajkowicz and Collins 2007) and participatory risk mapping – PRM (Cadag and Gaillard 2012) to examine local governance of excess water as well as the perceived causes, preventive measures, impacts and local responses to flood disasters at individual, household and community levels in a multiple-risk environment. The qualitative and participatory approach will be complemented by appropriate semi-quantitative methods developed in the context of network analysis and organizational research, such as visualized group discussions and organizational mapping. Q-methodology will be employed to elicit community perspectives and responses to flood disasters and to identify key issues and priorities in building community resilience to future flood events and associated livelihood risks (e.g. Raadgever et al. 2008, Gruber 2011). Qualitative data will be analysed with ATLAS.ti, a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software. Semi-quantitative datasets on social networks will be analysed by UCINET, a standardized software package developed for investigating social networks.

References

Cadag J.R.D., Gaillard J.C. (2012) Integrating knowledge and actions in disaster risk reduction: The contribution of participatory mapping. Area, 44(1): 100-109.
Gruber J (2011) Perspectives of Effective and Sustainable Community-based Natural Resource Management: An Application of Q Methodology to Forest Projects. Conservation and Society 9(2): 159-171.
Hajkowicz, S and Collins, K (2007) A review of multiple criteria analysis for water resource planning and management. Water Resource Management 21: 1553-1566.
Raadgever G, Mostert E, and van de Giesen N (2008) Identification of stakeholder perspectives on future flood management in the Rhine basin using Q methodology. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 12, 1097–1109.