Primary Research Methods

The main objective of my primary or field research was to gain an understanding of people’s livelihoods. I also aimed at raising awareness of the role that energy played in their lives beyond what might be regarded as obvious – for example, while using LPG to cook food is an obvious use, the role that energy plays in water supply either by pumping from wells (as in Niue) or by desalination (as in Tuvalu) is less so. Discussions (interviews and conversations) were framed so as to be a dialogue rather than for me to take the role as an interrogator in a question and answer session. I commenced by introducing myself, followed by a discussion on the objectives of my research carefully so that informants understood the aims of my research. In most cases, the participants were happy to engage although there was initial shyness in some cases.

In some respects my approach to primary research was similar to rapid rural assessment (RRA) for the reason that RRA is suited to short term studies and is ideal for “learning by outsiders” (R. Chambers, 1994, p. 1438; Webber & Ison, 1995, p. 108). In this context, short term means days or weeks (Webber & Ison, 1995, p. 108) rather than months or years and my research programme involving two or three visits to each of the research sites lasting between seven and 10 days is in clearly in that category. RRA is, as noted above, aimed at learning by outsiders and this can be seen as a pejorative in that it is “extractive and elicitive”

and may do little for the local people who are the participants in the research (R. Chambers, 1994, p. 1438). While my research was overtly “extractive and elicitive”, I attempted to ensure that there was a level of participation by encouraging discussion on issues and hopefully enlarging people’s understanding of energy supply as something that affects all aspects of their livelihoods.

Before commencing research for this thesis, I had been involved in energy-related consultancy work in Niue and Tuvalu and had visited both countries. This was of considerable advantage as it meant that I had some understanding of the physical environment and social conditions together with detailed knowledge of the energy sectors, particularly electricity. Of equal value were the people I met during the visits, a small number of which became key informants for my research. Having these informants already in place and familiarity with Niue and, in the case of Tuvalu, Funafuti, meant that I was able to commence research activities immediately on arrival.

Primary research comprising interviews, conversations and observation was a major source of information for the contemporary era. Older participants could also recall the later stages of the colonial eras in both countries. As noted above, the primary research was supplemented by secondary data in the form of literature and official publications. The results from primary research are discussed in Chapter 4 (Niue) and Chapter 5 (Tuvalu). My principal tool for inquiry was the semi-structured interview, also known as the interview guide approach (Patton, 2001, p. 343) The main characteristic of this approach is that it is conversational, not interrogative, and unstructured in terms of the order in which questions are put and while relatively informal, a question portfolio or guide is prepared beforehand. This portfolio ensures that all matters for which information is required are covered and in a reasonably uniform way (Patton, 2001, p. 349). While ensuring that the prepared questions were put to the informant, I encouraged as much as possible a free-flowing discussion as this proved to be useful means of obtaining a good appreciation of people’s day to day lives and importantly, in many cases their perspective on energy supply and utilisation issues. However, most people do not think of “energy” as a finite asset as for them, it is the service that energy enables that matters – as Figure 9 above illustrated under the heading “Livelihood Impacts”. Using the information requirements set out in Figure 10, question portfolios were prepared before each visit. These were intended to cover people’s day to day lives and thereby provide a useful overview of people’s livelihoods including their priorities. The question portfolios are included as Appendix 1.

Where participants were older people, my questions were also aimed at obtaining information on life before widespread electrification when the services that rely on modern energy were not generally available. These services – which I refer to in this and following chapters as “livelihood services” – include services such as health, education, water supply, transport and communications. Referring to Figure 9, these services rely on energy services to achieve the desired livelihood impacts.

Questions put to government officials focussed largely on policy and planning issues:

x The role of the informant.

x National development plans, issues and challenges.

x Energy planning and strategies for the future.

Interviews with government officials tended to be more constrained than was the case when interviewing other participants. As was expected, the information largely provided followed the official government line; this included interviews with both New Zealand government officials (such as from the New Zealand Aid Programme within Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade) and government officials in Niue and Tuvalu. This is not intended to suggest these interviews were of no or little value; to the contrary, these interviews provided useful information on policies and plans and without exception, the government officials were cooperative and friendly.

I note that in both categories of interviews, in several cases, the questions in the portfolio acted as a catalyst for a discussion that covered a wider range of topics than those set out in the question portfolio. Wherever possible, the quality of information received from an informant was cross-checked against that received from other informants and, ideally, against published information – although this triangulation was not always possible.

Informants fell into two categories:

x Key informants.

x General informants.

As I noted above, prior to commencing field research, I identified and contacted people in Niue and Tuvalu who I had met previously and who I considered had good knowledge of society in general and the energy sector in particular. This first group of key informants assisted me to identify additional key informants as my field visits proceeded. I aimed to select key informants with good insights into the way their communities function and including government officials, people employed in the public and private sectors and the general public. In Niue, it was relatively easy to identify participants who worked in the private sector, mostly with some connection with tourism. In Tuvalu, however, I had difficulty in identify private sector informants and as a result, my private sector informants were limited to people involved in seafarer recruitment. Key informants included people from older age groups who could recall the days before modern energy was available. Interviews generally followed the semi-structured format described above and I aimed to interview some key informants on at least two visits.

General informants were drawn from a wide range of people and as far as possible representing a cross section in terms of age and gender but as I will discuss below, there were some constraints to this. Often, discussions with general informants were opportunistic and conversational in nature and the topic or topics discussed evolved as the conversation proceeded rather than to a formal schedule. Nevertheless, the information gained from such discussions was of great value in providing an insight into life in general and supplemented the more formal approach adopted in the semi-structured interviews with key informants. The general informant discussions were also useful in obtaining information not directly related to my research but still of relevance, an example being discussions with economists from an international development agency visiting Tuvalu to provide advice on the government’s budget.

In addition to interviews and conversation, I used observation, a useful means of gathering background information on life and livelihoods in both Niue and Tuvalu. Typically, this involved casual conversation in shops, the hotels, cafés and other public areas and covered a range of topics or involved simply walking around a village looking at how people live and their surroundings.

In terms of energy usage, I obtained information from government sources such as the electricity corporations and fuel importing agencies. In parallel, I visited major government and private sector energy consumers such as hospitals, schools and hotels. The objective of these visits was twofold: firstly, to discuss with staff the services that these institutions provide and secondly, to gain an understanding of the reliance that these institutions have on energy supply – particularly electricity – to maintain those services.

I considered the use of questionnaires as one method of obtaining data on household energy use. However, data was available from government sources on electricity use in particular albeit up to five years old (SPC, 2012a, 2012b). In the case of other household fuels – including personal transport – good general data was available on a “global” basis – that is for the country as a whole but it was also possible and useful as a check for individual household data gathered through semi-structured interviews.