Reflection on Methods

Reflection on Methods

Within the UEP program, several methods were introduced and discussed which were a tremendous help to have a more comprehensive analysis of the fieldwork. However, some of these methods were not designed to be used in a pandemic situation.

During the preliminary stages, the data was gathered by observation mainly and it did not involve social interactions. But as the face-to-face interviews started, using participatory methods became increasingly important. A noteworthy example would be that we all experienced situations, when stakeholders’ interest contradicts, and sometimes reaching consensus about an issue among residents appeared to be impossible. Participatory methods are helpful in this case to involve opposing groups, so they can discuss the issues, and be aware of each other’s problems.

Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 situation, most participatory methods could not be applied easily. When we first started working on the problem statement, we identified a list of issues and we needed to narrow them down. While trying to prioritize different issues to identify main problems, there were uncertainties whether the stakeholders agree on how the problems were ranked based on their importance. In some cases, the overlapping issues have been picked from different stakeholders in order to find the common problem that every stakeholder benefits from if intervened. Due to different corona regulations regarding social gathering based on the effect of pandemic pertaining to the four case study countries , some group members managed to do a group of four