The respondents for the study in this phase are – beneficiaries of the check dams or village residents where the check dams are built by SJT and other NGOs, members of SJT and village residents where no check dams have been built. Members of SJT, other NGOs are also the respondents for the study, who have been engaged in building check dams or water harvesting strategies and its implementation.
With available time and requirement of the study, it was decided that it is advisable to collect qualitative and descriptive data in this phase. The second phase could cover quantitative data through sample survey. Therefore, the research has adopted various methods for qualitative and descriptive primary data collection. They are mentioned below:
- Focused group discussion (FGDs) with the village committee members and the beneficiaries.
- Interviews of the beneficiaries (covering social, economic and environmental aspects) and of those where check dams are not built;
- Interviews of the SJT members, other NGO members;
- Observation – visiting all the villages covered under study and the checkdams; and
- Triangulation of existing secondary (written and audio-visual) data and primary data.
This data will provide descriptive information to understand the intervention and its perceived impact, which would be able to answer various points of ongoing debate on the issue.
The research team is consisted of CEED students, independent researchers (sociologist, senior geo-hydrologist, a planner with expertise on water harvesting system and engineers) and technical experts for evaluating socio-economic, environmental impact of the intervention and technical aspects.
Researchers and subject experts to understand various aspects and to get a feel of the situation carried out a daylong field visit. Based on this visit, research tools were created to collect primary data through FGDs and interview.
This data will provide descriptive information to understand the intervention and its perceived impact, which would be able to answer various points of ongoing debate on the issue.
The training, / orientation sessions were organized with CEED students and subject experts. With close interaction with CEED students, a detailed plan for data collection was chalked out, for conducting interviews and FGDs, preparing an aerial view map and so on. All the students were oriented to employ their technical knowledge whenever required and to get detailed information about impact on social, economic and environmentarspheres. In all 10 students of CEED were divided into 5 teams (2 persons in each team) and responsibilities among them were divided as per their interests and technical knowledge. A detailed code-sheet was also prepared to document the information through FGDs and interviews.
Over and above these data, a day long fieldwork was earned out by a technical expert; he visited three villages to study the impact of these check dams on the local ground water regime and about 6 check dams were examined as well as their impact on the cropping pattern.
The data was collected during 2nd week of March and 1st week of April 2004 by the team of subject experts, CEED students and technical expert. The research team has received technical support of Water and Land Management Institute (WALMI) through out the study.
