LIMITATIONS AND SHORTCOMINGS OF THE DATA

Ensuring the validity and reliability of the results is an important aim of the study. This chapter in particular has outlined the various measures that were implemented to produce a reliable and accurate data set for analysis. Despite the quality control measures, I want to recognise the shortcomings and limitations of the data collection method as well as the gaps in the dataset.

4.11.1 Intra-household dynamics and the measurement of poverty

I believe it is probably appropriate to first acknowledge some limitations when implementing national representative household surveys. For instance, it has been found that household members’ poverty status impact on other members of the household (Woolard & Leibbrandt, 2006: 4). In this regard, it is anticipated that intra-household dynamics influence how respondents may perceive and experience poverty. For instance, researchers must be aware of the size of a household as well as the total income of the household when analyzing and interpreting data. Other factors to consider are whether the household is a female-headed household, and whether food and incomes are shared among household members. Furthermore, to assess individual well-being, one would require information on specific consumption of each individual household member.

Regrettably, this information is rarely available or complete when selected respondents have to answer questions on behalf of the entire household. The LPI consists of a series of questions that require the respondents to answer questions on behalf of their entire family. It is therefore important that I emphasize that respondents in the present study had to estimate whether everyone in the family, for example, had enough food to eat over the past year.

To address this concern some researchers select the most knowledgeable person from the household or the head of the household for the interview. Although the selected respondent in this case may be more familiar with the overall circumstances of the household such as the income earned for the year, this approach is criticized for a lack of randomization. I opted to randomly select the respondent within the household and not to interview an individual on the basis of his position within that household.

4.11.2 Limitations with regards to questionnaire content

The study could be improved through the implementation of a questionnaire that exclusively focuses on perceptions of the causes of poverty. The mixture of questions about ICT and poverty may have impacted on how the respondents answered the various sections. Nevertheless, I made sure that the shift between the content areas was appropriate by asking the poverty questions after the demographic section which included some personal information as well as characteristics of the household.

Because of lack of questionnaire space I was unable to include other relevant indicators such as the impact of religion and politics on people’s perceptions of the causes of poverty. A study by Nasser et al. (2002: 113) found that religion as a belief system may play an instrumental role in shaping perceptions of poverty. Lee (2000: 202) highlighted that homogeneous and stagnant poor neighbourhoods are particularly vulnerable to crime.

I therefore acknowledge that a range of variables may impact on perceptions of poverty, but limited questionnaire space and budgetary constraints only allowed for the inclusion of a few demographic variables.

Furthermore, I want to emphasize the use of primary data collected by the HSRC to answer the research questions. In doing so, it may have opened the door for criticism about using a secondary data source. However, I must reiterate that the questions used to inform this study were revised and then administered in the field. In addition, I fully participated in all aspects of the survey from the questionnaire construction process up to the data analysis. Despite personally being involved in the study, it is obvious that a

public opinion survey of this magnitude required a large project team if it was to be successfully executed. It is against this background that the role played by other researchers and research assistants to implement a survey of about 3500 respondents is recognized.

4.11.3 General shortcomings of surveys

In general, surveys are often criticized for their lack of in-depth information. This criticism is mainly a result of the over-reliance on close-ended questions, which provide little scope for exploration that is needed to gather new information. In addition, survey questionnaires are often exposed to high refusal rates, high non-response rates, interviewer effects, respondent effects, fieldwork and data capturing errors as well as sampling errors. In this chapter I emphasized that a number of quality mechanisms were built into the study to ensure that the survey minimized most errors related to data collection and data capturing. In Chapter 5 I show that the quality mechanisms employed by the study yielded a very reliable and valid data set with very few missing data.

Finally, while the study provided data on perceptions of the causes of poverty and on several socio-demographic variables, further research is needed to understand how these perceptions influence respondents’ support for poverty-related policies and programmes.

Nevertheless, chapter 7 of this dissertation discusses the impact of the perceptions on poverty-related policies and programmes, and how the results of the present study can be used to inform existing and new policies in this regard.

4.12 CONCLUSION

The literature review found very few South African studies on perception of the causes of poverty. As a result, I had to build my research design and methods mostly on international studies particularly from Europe and the United States. Despite these constraints, I believe that the research methodology is unprecedented and invaluable for

furthering research on perceptions of the causes of poverty within Africa, and particularly South Africa.

This chapter outlined the research design and methodology of the study to investigate perceptions of the causes of poverty. The results of this investigation are presented in Chapter 5 and discussed in Chapter 6.

CHAPTER 5