The session started with an introduction from the host Kefilwe Bogosi, she gave a brief background of PACJA and its achievements in 2021 on ensuring a people-centred energy transition in Africa through civil society engagement under its African coalition for sustainable energy & access (ACSEA). She gave the objective of the training which is to cover approaches to data collection and analysis that are useful for conducting national policy environment assessments and evaluations with a focus on renewable energy governance framework, she equally laid down the expected results of each participant at the end of the workshop then she gave a detailed explanation on how the program will run down, and gave the floor to Mr Sydney Samuel who started his presentation by outlining the format of the presentation.
Choosing a research question for a project can be pretty challenging but once it is done everything else begins to flow easily and to achieve a good research project, the researcher needs to first and foremost choose a research design which are the techniques chosen by the researcher to conduct a study i.e., purpose statement (research question), objectives, methodology, timeline, and analysis method which he further explained detailly in the subsequent slides.
He went further to identify the different research methods, that is a quantitative research method which is used to measure quantifiable data and is often expressed in the form of digits, units, and ratios and with quantitative the questions can either be open-ended or close ended, close-ended questions are intended to provide a precise clearly defined answers like yes or no while open-ended questions allow respondents to express themselves.
A quantitative survey is a method of collecting information from a pool of respondents by asking multiple questions and there are three main survey research methods: online or email, through phone or face to face
Data can be collected through survey questionnaires like using close-ended survey questionnaires or data reviews and there are 5 steps to achieve a good survey research design
- Define research questions
- Identify the main concepts to measure
- Identify indicators based on the concepts of interest
- Design questionnaires and mode of administration
- Pilot test questionnaire in the field, revise, repilot and finalize
The questions can be factual, informative, attitudinal, self-perception, standard of action or projective, it will be important for each objective to have at least three questions
In data preparation steps, here you need to find out whether the data collecting bis responding to your questions and then deal only with results which consistent and this involves four steps
- Data validation
- Data editing
- Data coding
- Data analysis
We then had a 30minuts break after which we came back and did the qualitative method of research in which the host identified the main goals of qualitative research
- To test whether the policies are accepted or appropriate
- Explain, enquiring why policies are not accepted and if they are not accepted what might be the causes
- Describe, providing further details on the undocumented issues and how might your research mitigate these issues
- Explore, provide information that is whether your research is providing new information which does not exist in the literature review
Two methods are used in qualitative research, population which is in-depth interview with respondents and it can be one on one or focused group where questions are asked to a certain group of people and they have to give one common answer and documents which involves online research on an organization which has already developed or has worked on something similar to your research topic, the interview can be structured ( providing a group of fixed questions that remain the same for each respondent), semi-structured ( the answer to the first question determines the next question) and lastly unstructured (no fixed order hence questions are formulated during the interview based on what the interviewer observes.
At the level of results, you need to provide information which can help the country to mitigate the barriers in acceptance of a policy in the chosen area.
The workshop ended with breakout session where participants had to form groups and work together on questions that were provided by the host and two groups did a good presentation, but it was clear everyone understood what the workout session was about and he encouraged everyone to try what you learnt, the session ended with closing remarks from Mr Eugene Nforngwa project lead
