A total of eighteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with the aid workers and government agents actively involved in disaster relief work. Interviewees were selected from the leading relief/aid agencies operating in Bangladesh, including Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Action Aid, and the government’s Disaster Management Bureau.
In these interviews I encouraged the relief workers to talk of their personal experiences rather than seek to represent the views of their organization or employer. Again, I used open-ended questions to prompt the discussion of experiences and lessons learnt. In all cases, the relief workers said that the specific needs of women are rarely met and that success tends to be measured in terms of simple volumes of relief material distributed rather than the extent to which the relief aid is targeted to the most vulnerable people and groups in the disaster-affected communities. In general, the relief workers welcomed the opportunity to discuss their personal experiences and share some of their frustrations about poor targeting of relief aid.
3.8 Data Analysis
The sections below describe the processes by which data were organized and analysed. As mentioned earlier, the study was conducted using qualitative approach with two modes of data collection. The first being the survey questionnaire and second, the interviews and focus groups. My aim in analyzing the data was to look at How the disaster response, relief, and recovery are provided to affected communities? What preparation and coping mechanisms are currently in place for women to provide immediate relief and recovery services? To what extent does gender bias exist in natural disaster management (DM) in Bangladesh? The following sections will explicitly explain how the techniques were used in analyzing the data.
Survey questionnaire
A number of steps were taken once the once the questionnaire was returned to the researcher. Initial advice was taken from an expert in relation to the use of Social Package for Social Science (SPSS) to find out the best way for codifying and analyzing the data. Once this information was gathered, the next step involved entering the variables from the questionnaire followed by descriptive statistics which uses the data to provide descriptions of the population, either through numerical calculations or graphs or tables and inferential statistical analysis which makes inferences and predictions about a population based on a sample of data taken
Page | 65 from the population in question. These techniques were used to analyze the data and interpret the findings.
Interviews and Focus Groups
The qualitative and interpretive data collected from face-to-face interviews and focus groups were analysed using four analytical techniques: within-case display, content analysis, pattern search and explanation building. All these analyses were carried out using, NVivo. NVivo is a qualitative data analysis (QDA) software program used the analysis of unstructured text, interviews, focus groups, surveys (mixed methods) and social media. It has been designed for qualitative researchers working with very rich text-based and/or multimedia information, where deep levels of analysis on small or large volumes of data are required. This software allowed for efficient storage, coding, indexing and retrieval of data so that patterns in the data could be discovered. The software is based on a code-and-retrieve technique for within a “project” created by the researcher. It keeps “on-line” and “off-line” text organized and portable. On-line documents are the transcribed text while off-line documents are secondary data such as archival reports, tables and graphs from other sources.
3.9 Limitation of the study
While the researcher had the advantage of the language, the knowledge of local cultural practices remained limited and it was obvious that there were aspects of local life at the village that remain hidden as. I could never fully step into their shoes.
It was hard to work between the worlds of professional disaster relief and localized village life. Despite every effort it was very hard to translate some of the terms and assumptions that underpin disaster management work into language that the women could readily understand. It was equally difficult to translate the experiences of the women into a pragmatic, instrumental, language used by disaster management agencies. It was also difficult to gather accurate demographic data, not only because many of the women were reluctant to divulge personal information but also because concepts such as monthly income are rather obscure to them. Most of them live in a world in which income is erratic and takes many forms; ‘averages’ make little sense to them. In addition, several practical difficulties were faced many practical difficulties in getting women to attend interviews at particular times and many of them felt highly constrained by their domestic duties. Some felt the need to hurry home to cook for their husbands and/or children and some of my interviews were interrupted a number of times. It was difficult to find an appropriate venue for interviews and difficult to take notes, while also trying the best to make the interviewees feel relaxed. I did not transcribe the interview and group discussion recordings in full but used my notes to listen back to critical parts of the interviews and group discussions. The recordings were valuable to check the accuracy of my notes and memory. Mixed methods research is very time consuming. Conducting a survey with around 200 respondents in each case study community was the most time-consuming process of all yet it yielded fewer insights than the focus groups and interviews.
Page | 66 Red Crescent officers accompanied me when I met some of the women and this may have influenced what they told me, at least initially. Not surprisingly, the Red Crescent officers put me in touch with women who had received relief aid from them, and I had to consciously correct this bias by seeking out women who had received relief from other agencies or not at all.
Page | 67
CHAPTER FOUR
CASE STUDY: SILAI UNION
4.0 INTRODUCTION
Shilai Union villages are located in Munshiganj District, which is within the Dhaka Division of Bangladesh. As mentioned in chapter 3, the district has 14 rivers with a combined length of 150 kilometers flowing through it. The district is about 22 kilometers south-east from Dhaka city but the case study villages are located on an island (char) in the Padma River in the southern part of the district. They are in a rural zone and are relatively remote from the capital city.
The villages of the district faced major flooding in 1998, 2004 and 2008. All caused severe damage to the agricultural economy, particularly because they affected crops in the fields. The flooding had a prolonged impact on village economies and the everyday life of the villagers. The most recent major flood was in 2008. Most of the respondents to the research survey recounted their experiences based on their memory of the 2008 flood. The women reported that this flood was lower in magnitude than the 1998 and 2004 floods, but the flood occurred earlier than anticipated and many farmers suddenly found that they could not harvest their crops. The severity of damage to houses and disruption to daily activities was much more intense than in previous floods. The impacts of regular flooding in the district are cumulative, especially for those with few economic resources. Residents of the area are engaged in a constant struggle with recurrent floods and land erosion.