D ata C ollection m etho ds

The analysis of data collected is the most complicated aspect of the case study method (Yin, 1984, 1998; Eisenhardt, 1999). It is also essential in establishing study boundaries by eliminating unnecessary data and focusing on the essential information. This study is of the Lagos State PSP Programme which basically covers the collection of waste from the municipal households and their transfer to the central landfill. The focus was on six groups of urban actors as outlined in Section 2.5. Yin (1994) views the study of implementation processes as being a bit cumbersome because the boundaries are harder to set and the units of analysis are less clear. While he does argue that it is a harder case study to undertake compared to, say, the study of a laboratory experiment, it is possible to carry out a case study on the implementation process (Yin, 1994).

Yin (1998) puts forward two factors must be factored into an implementation study.

The first is a possible programme variation from its original design and the second is the programme components that existed before it became a formal procedure (Yin, 1998). By explicitly recognizing program delivery dynamics it is possible to accommodate any changes (not too drastic) that may be required during the research process. In deed from an implementation perspective, these are the important elements of the study.

A characteristic of Phase I of the PSP waste collection programme was the stability of the programme during the research period. No significant changes to the policy were made by any of the actors in the implementation of the PSP Programme. This stability meant that the research did not have to depart from the original research design. This research was also able to gather information on the recently completed Phase I of the PSP Programme which is used in a comparative analysis in Chapters eight and nine.

2.17.1. Interviews

The interview method has been selected as the most efficient method of collecting data from the groups o f participants because it allows the researcher to not just be able to collect empirical information from the respondents but also to observe how the interviewees respond (Gubrium and Holstein, 2001). Interviews are important tools used by researchers to understand not just the issue that they are interviewing the respondents for but the respondents themselves from the way they give information and their body language, adding an extra dimension and depth to the empirical information collected from them (Yin, 1998).

Below is a table o f the interviews to be carried and the types of interview methods to be used with the different participants.

Table 2:1. Interviews

Interviewees Number interviewed Interview Type

Households 169 Structured interviews

Policy Makers 4 Semi-structured interviews

Monitoring officials 1 Semi-structured interviews

PSP 16 Focus Group

Cart-pushers 18 Semi-structured interviews/

Focus group

2.17.2. Households (End Users)

The structured interviews were utilized undertaken with the aid of a questionnaire in order to take advantage of the economies of scale that it allows for. This method allows for the stratified sampling of the population. The data required needs to establish the public’s willingness, or lack of it, to participate wholly or partially within the PSP process. Originally, the data from this group was intended to be collected from three sample areas to cover the three main income groups - upper income groups, middle income groups and low income groups. In practice, though this method of sampling the population proved to be too dangerous, because o f political unrest during the fieldwork period, and time-consuming and had to be discontinued. The questionnaire used for this group is included in Appendix A.

High and middle income households and to a lesser extent, the low income households were inaccessible for the research process. This is because the high and middle income households usually have guards at the gate and attend to people they know mainly because of crime. Moreover, it was unsafe to enter the compounds as a lone researcher.

There is also a lack of security in low income areas that prohibited collecting responses from a door-to-door survey. As an alternative strategy, the researcher decided to interview End Users at their place of work and social gatherings. These two areas allowed for access to household members from the three sample groups that make up the general population.

The places o f work which were chosen included banks, oil companies and communication companies. The places of social gathering I chose were two shopping malls, a bar and two beer parlours. The sample criteria were levels o f income and type of area of residence. The sample sizes were chosen based on their income groups and area of residence.

At the places of work, the sample was based on the position of the individuals. The different positions of staff were an indication o f their income group for instance, the manager would be of a higher income group compared to the security guard. Generally, most people answered my questions in the neutral environments.

The data collected from this group however was still not truly representative of the geographical areas of the state. This meant that the researcher still had a limited view of implementation from the point o f view o f the End Users. For this reason, there is a hesitation to generalize for this group and the data collected from them is used sparingly within the thesis.

2.17.2. Policy Makers

The semi-structured interview method was used for the Policy Makers mainly because there was a need for qualitative information to the data collected. The Policy Makers were able to discuss both the current policy and its historical development. The semi-structured interview also allowed the researcher to not just understand the policy but also to understand the policy maker’s role in the policy implementation. In a city like Lagos, especially when dealing with the public services, understanding the person aids in understanding the outcome o f the person’s work as their personalities are usually reflected in the way they carry out their work.

2.17.3. Monitoring Officials

A semi-structured interview process is used because it was pertinent that assumptions were not made about the monitoring of the PSP Programme. This group was interviewed in order to better understand the factors which assist or hinder effective monitoring of the PSP Programme.

2.17.4. PSP Service Providers

A focus group was used for the PSP Contractors for two reasons. The first was for convenience as the PSP Contractors are located all over the State with some having their offices in low rent premises on the outskirts of the city. The traffic in Lagos is very bad, and it would have been very difficult meeting them. The second reason is that, the PSP Contractors were reported as having similar issues in fulfilling their contractual obligations, and this proved to be the case in the focus group, It proved to be beneficial to the operation of the focus group that people who would not necessarily open up when interviewed alone were able to contribute to the group discussion with people where circumstances are shared. This group serve as the street level bureaucrats for this thesis.

2.17.5. Cart-pushers

The focus group and semi-structured method was used for this group to give more insight into the group. It was essential not to ask questions that gave one word answers and to try and encourage the interviewees to speak freely. The illegality o f their services had made it difficult during the first round of interviews to meet a large number of respondents, and the

researcher was only able to interview five individuals with the semi structured interviews.

During the second round of interviews, the researcher was able to have focus group interview with cart-pushers as mentioned in Section 2. The first focus group interview was unplanned as in the process of trying to interview one practitioner, other practitioners joined in and it turned into a focus group interview with seven people. The researcher then arranged with them to meet a different group the next day and was able to another focus group interview with six.

The main reason for the combination of different methods is to be able to a) understand the topic being studied from different perspectives, and b) use the appropriate interview methods to the actors to get the most information out of the interviews.