Understanding post-conflict settings often requires a mixed-methods approach to research.
Over the last few months I’ve been part of a project in Northern Uganda with the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC), Busara Center for Behavioural Economics and Narrate. In a unique research design this combines qualitative, quantitative and experimental methods.
All to explore questions of behaviour: how do past experiences of conflict affect behaviour in peace-time? And are these behaviours likely to aid or hinder post-conflict recovery?
Our research uses four different methodologies:
- Our team asked 700 people to narrate a story of importance to them. For half, about the past conflict in Northern Uganda; for the other half, about something that happened recently. They then answer a series of questions exploring how they make sense of and interpret their own stories. This is rich data itself, but the process also serves as a prime for…
- Behavioural games. Does recalling conflict make people more altruistic, fair, patient, likely to take risks? Using real money, they played a series of behavioural economics games with options to risk, pool and share cash.
- Parallel to this, Mareike and I, along with our Ugandan colleagues, conducted qualitative interviews with everyone from Rastafaris to local music sensations to explore people’s own perceptions, definitions and experiences in supposed ‘post-conflict recovery’.
- Finally, a three-wave panel survey set the broader scene and trends in Northern Uganda.
In the last month, our multi-disciplinary team has puzzled over bringing this data together. Here are my reflections on this process of mixed-methods research:
1. Focus, but leave room to explore themes that emerge unexpectedly
The vast amount of data is an abundance of riches, but also a lifetime of work. One of our first challenges was deciding where to look.
A starting point, as standard for experimental research, was our pre-analysis plan. This set out our hypotheses and provided important rigour and confidence in the research.
However, this should not be overly constraining. Themes often emerge unexpectedly in discussion between methodologies and our different findings.
For example, the behavioural games show how people who recall the conflict tend to behave more patiently. In the interviews we regularly heard how life in Northern Uganda is full of waiting – for fulfilment of promises; inclusion in programmes; political change and more. Together we can tell a rich story of not just how conflict affects time preferences, but also what the real-life experience of these time preferences is. To focus solely on questions that we had pre-specified would be a limitation.
