Overview of Methods

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Overview of Methods

• Esther Mwangi

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Outline

• Motivations for methods
• New developments in NRM practice
• New challenges for research
• Methods for what?
• An overview of methods
• Key issues to remember
• Attempts to operationalize CA PR

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Motivations

• Community forestry
• Joint forest management
• Co-management of fisheries
• Devolution of forest management

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Motivations durability of institutions

• Over-emphasis on case studies of local
  institutions and resources (selection bias?)
• Neglect of the effects of resource attributes,
  user group membership and external environment
  affect durability (research design questions?)
• Relative importance of factors
• Omitted variables and incomplete specification

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Methods for what?

• Add to cumulative body of knowledge about PR and
  CA in NRM (policies and institutions)
• Innovation of approaches and institutions of PR
  and CA in particular circumstances (eg
  assessments of land titling effects)
• Increase effectiveness of external assistance for
  reducing poverty and improving NRM (eg Kothapally)

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Ultimately

• We seek knowledge to explain, predict, describe,
  explore, understand, how property rights affect
  use and management of natural resources and how
  internal and external factors affect
  participation in collective action
• Research designprocess for deciding what aspects
  we shall observe, of whom, and for what purpose

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Approaches

• Inductive
• Starts with concrete, specific observations and
  aims to identify general principles governing
  what is being observed
• Deductive
• Starts with general principles then turns to
  specific observations to test the validity of
  theoretical expectation

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• Usually alternation between the two
• Eg observations explanationssuggest other
  patternsfurther observationsmodficationsnew
  expectations

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A standard view of the research process
problem
hypothesis
generalization
Theory cumulative body of verifiable
knowledge
Research design
Data analysis
Data collection
measurement
Source C. Frankfort-Nachmias and D. Nachmias
(1996, fifth edition), Research Methods in the
Social Sciences, St. Martins Press, New York, USA
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The research process

• The problem question to motivate research links
  to theory support to policy institutions
  program
• Hypothesis what you expect given existing
  knowledge, experience
• Methods indicators measurement data
  collection analysis
• Conclusions generalizations implications

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Some methods

• Behavior (resource use participation in CA)
• Participants recall recent and past behavior (eg
  how many headloads/day/week/season?)
• Measure actual behavior (count yourself)
• Actual behavior in experiments
• Actual behavior in policy/program interventions

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Measuring behavior (contd)

• Hypothetical behavior using contingent valuation
  (eg valuing water)
• Predictions from statistical or structural models

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B. Institutions, sources of sanction, collective
processes

• Key informant and in-depth interviews with
  leaders, group/non-group members, enforcers,
  facilitators
• Registries of groups
• Surveys of who do you trust
• Analysis of rule enforcement and violation
  statistics

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Institutions..etc (contd)

• Multiple perceptions of particular cases of rule
  violation
• Case study analysis
• Group interviews
• Observation
• Secondary data of governance indicators

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C. Resource use outcomes

• Individual participants perceptions of resource
  quality and resource trends
• Participatory mapping
• Group perceptions of resource quality
• Participant assessment of key indicators (eg
  water quality assessment)
• Technical assessment of key indicators (eg run
  off, erosion, primary production, indicator
  species)

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Resource outcomes (contd)

• Remote sensing
• Satellite imagery, time series
• Aerial photos, time series

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Enhancing integration of methods

• De-emphasize disciplinary approaches emphasize
  results
• Take care of scale and unit-plot, individuals,
  household, village, district, regions
• Take advantage and add value to natural
  experiments (eg tenure policy experiments)

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Other considerations

• Ethics
• DO NO HARM
• voluntary
• Develop clear expectations of intellectual rights
  and publication to team results
• Participation of team members in research cycle
  from design to implementation
• Plan to publish to ensure peer review and
  recognized contribution to knowledge

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operationalize

• Develop research procedures (operations) that
  will result in empirical observations
  representing concepts (eg collective action) in
  the real world
• Range of variation that interests you (levels of
  CA vs presence/absence)
• Variation between extremes (eg married/not
  married vs never married, separated, widowed,
  divorced)

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Collective action

• Indicators
• Often many group into dimensions
• Unit/Scale of analysis
• Things we examine in order to create summary
  descriptions of all such units and to explain
  differences among them
• Typically also units of observation
• Must be clear
• Decide whether outcome studied is at group or
  entire community level
• Eg role of NRM in poverty reduction (individuals)
• eg. Role of CA in NRM

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• If not, risk of making assertions about one unit
  of analysis yet examined another
• Some indicators useful only at certain scales
• Some can be aggregated, others not

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Units of Analysis

• Individual or household participation,
  contributions, benefits
• Groups, networks structure, function,
  activities, benefits
• Community number of organizations, institutions

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CA Indicators

• Usually many indicators
• Can group them into dimensions
• Structural group number, group size, wealth
• Functions number/types of rules, sanctions
• Performance resource condition, poverty
  reduction, equity

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Your CA Indicators

• Structural
• Crisis support systems and responses
• Leadership
• Defined user boundaries (?)
• Presence of groups
• Formally registered groups

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Your CA Indicators

• Functional indicators
• Increased participation
• Meeting places regular meetings
• Group communication (dissent)
• Information and knowledge sharing
• Development plans
• Conflict resolution
• Number of equitable decisions made (?)
• Contributions in cash/kind to NRM
• Rules and regulations

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Your indicators

• Performance
• Cleanliness of water sources
• Decisions made for equity/equitable cost/benefist
  sharing
• Status of forest/pasture nearby
• Status of community members (poverty/opulence)
• Savings of the group
• Identification by government
• Institutionalizing learnings from CA

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Function or activity

• Eg. level of participation of members
• members individuals of groups/networks
• at what scale can this be assessed
• participation presence only or taking part in
  an activity which activity, what time period..
• level different degrees of participation
• subjective vs objective absolute or relative

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Performance

• Eg. Equity and increased access to natural
  resources by the more vulnerable groups

How can we measure equity? Who would you ask
about equity to? Access is measured by what
specific indicators? Which groups are more
vulnerable? How would we handle different
responses/perceptions by different respondents?
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• Among Your Collective Action Indicators
• Words that require definition Clearer words
• Level Presence
• Ability Absence
• Extent Existence
• Access Frequency
• The better indicators are likely to be more
  difficult to measure

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A Helpful Way Forward

• 1. Put this variable in the context of a
  relationship you wish to test
• Rule Compliance f(level of participation of
  members in decision making)
• Percentage of members who participated in the
  formulation of the rule
• 2. Make a table of what you want to present
• Level of Participation Level of Participation
• High involved in activity X
• Medium involved in activity Y
• Low involved in activity Z

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Simple Conceptual Model for PR Studies
Determinants
De jure rights
De facto rights
Tenure security
Ownership patterns of resource control
Leveraging possibilities
Outcomes (investments, NRM, production)
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Scale of Analysis

• Property rights can be defined over a specific
  resource/asset and a specific individual (e.g.
  man vs woman) or group, or business, or
  government
• Different members of a household may have
  different rights to a particular plot or tree
• The same member of the household may have
  different rights over different trees on the same
  farm
• Rights can be defined for larger resource areas
  riverine areas, forests, wetlands, lakes, etc.

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Dimension of Time

• Rights and tenure security (legal and de facto)
  can change over time
• Besides a change in a law, what would make land
  rights change for a community or farmer?

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Property Rights Indicators from Your Groups

• Rights to alter, transfer, exclude, benefit,
  manage (depending on whether you are in
  community, private or state forests
• Legal rights, user rights,
• customary rights, legal rights, mortgages,
  informal leases,
• Management rights, access rights,

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Which one to Use?

• There is no right often not a wrong
• Some measures that seem better theoretically
  (e.g. tenure security) are difficult to measure
• Some may be directly related to policy variables
• Examining the relationships among them is often
  very illuminating

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Principle Categories of Rights

• Transfer rights sell, give, rent, lend,
  bequeath
• Use rights plant trees, construct terraces,
  cultivate crops, choose enterprises, apply
  inputs, clear bush, graze animals
• Exclusion rights prevent others from picking
  fruits, grazing on residues, taking firewood,
  right to fence property
• Others?

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How can we measure rights?

• Presence / absence?
• Are there gradations?
• How about the necessity to have approval to
  exercise them?
• Do we need to pay attention to the specific
  resource, including type of crop, species of
  tree?
• How many rights should we measure?
• Are some more important than others?
• Does the possession of some imply the possession
  of others?
• How can we create bundles of rights?

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Can Create Bundles of Rights, but How to Compare
Them is An Issue
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Rights to Resources

• Agricultural land
• What are the important rights for a farmer to
  possess?
• Can we group these?
• How can we evaluate the overall rights a farmer
  might have over a field?

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Rights to Resources

• Woodland
• What are the important rights for a group to
  possess?
• Can we group these?
• How can we evaluate the overall rights a group
  might have over a field?

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In the end

• The purpose
• Resources (time, finance)
• On-ground situation