Part One – Budget allocation

The data from the semi-structured interviews showed that the participants had opinions about issues that were important to them. The participants also indicated that the Government was responsible for resolving some of those issues. Thus, the researcher suspected that participants would have opinions about how the State should allocate its budget (to address the issues that were important to them). Given that Timor-Leste’s petroleum revenue is the major source of funding for the State’s budget, knowing how participants would prefer to use that petroleum revenue is important. Thus, Part One of the Point*Wizard interviews was designed to elicit participants’ preferences about how petroleum revenue should be spent, and the criteria ranked were budget sectors.

Point*Wizard was used to elicit a ranking of each participant’s preferences in budget allocation by presenting them with two alternative budget expenditure scenarios and asking the participant ‘Which option would you choose if you were to increase the Budget?’ The question was preceded by a statement which provided a context for the question; ‘The Government of Timor- Leste receives revenue from petroleum exploitation and may choose to increase its budget’. Figure 5.5 gives an example of such a dilemma. The two budget expenditure scenarios included two criteria for each option, whilst all of the other options (i.e. other budget sectors) were equal. The two criteria came from a list of 14 budget sectors, and these criteria are illustrated in Figure 5.6 (on page 132). Each participant was provided with information regarding the budget sectors to aid their decision-making, and this information is provided in Appendix 5.

137 _{During the field research, if one of the three responses was inconsistent, a fourth question was asked to confirm} consistency. Most of the participants achieved 75 or 100% consistency and where the rate was less the researcher was satisfied that the reason for the inconsistency was not because the participant did not understand the method.

In this part of the Point*Wizard research, each criterion has just two categories; maintain current budget or increase expenditure. The first option presents one sector’s budget maintained and the other sector’s budget increased. The second option presents the same criteria with the opposite categories. Effectively, participants were asked to trade off two budget sectors at a time. In the example presented in Figure 5.5, it might appear easier to ask the participant ‘would you increase the Budget for education or public works?’ In cases where the participant was not comfortable with the software the question was asked verbally in this way. But, the research could not have been conducted manually in this way. When a system has 14 criteria there are 16,384 hypothetically-possible dilemmas. This means that conducting the research manually would not have been practical and using Point*Wizard reduces the number of dilemmas required to achieve a result. In a case with 14 criteria with two categories each, a ranking can be achieved in an average of 35 responses (the number varies between participants as the result depends on their responses).

Figure 5.7 (on page 133) provides an example of one participant’s ranking of the Budget sectors. The results indicate that this participant identified Water as the Budget sector most in need of increased budget allocation, whilst Defence was the sector this participant identified as being least in need of increased budget allocation. Participants’ comments, as they made their decisions, were also recorded as the interview progressed. Those comments provided further qualitative data for the field research and were analysed using N-Vivo qualitative data analysis software (similar to the method of analysis for the semi-structured interviews). The comments are especially insightful in terms of the connections between spending on different budget sectors. In reality, budget is not allocated to two sectors independently of others. Point*Wizard is a good method for achieving a ranking of the Budget allocation priorities, but it is the comments which illuminate the results and fuel the discussion about the participants’ priorities. For this reason, each interview took between 30 minutes and one hour depending on the extent of the participant’s comments and their general aptitude for this kind of research.

Part One is a relatively simple example of how Point*Wizard can be used to determine the order of relative importance of a number of criteria. But, at least one participant did not have the capacity to understand the method. Despite the method being explained by the interpreter, this participant could not grasp the concept of making a choice between two options. Thus, the results of that interview were not used. In addition to that participant’s results being excluded, a further two participants did not participate in Part One because of other constraints. Thus, 44 participants took part in Part One of the Point*Wizard interviews.

Sustainable Development or Resource Cursed? - Chapter Five

Figure 5.7 Point*Wizard Part One (Budget Allocation): Example order of relative importance