Using the survey method to assess the socioeconomic status of stakeholder households living within the project zone for the lower Zambezi REDD+ project.

Abstract

When governments or organizations wish to conduct research, they usually engage external experts in the relevant field to undertake the research. This is what is generally referred to as commissioned research. The process of engaging external experts tends to differ from one government to another and from one organization to another. Organizations or governments may commission research projects to investigate societal problems, understand them, and to find possible solutions to them. In the context of this research method case, the purpose of the research was to assess the socioeconomic status of stakeholder households living within the Lower Zambezi REDD+ (Reduced Deforestation and Degradation) Project. This was a Social Monitoring Survey conducted as a follow-up to the baseline survey that was conducted before the Lower Zambezi REDD+ Project began. The 2017 Follow-Up Social Monitoring Survey used the survey method to assess the socioeconomic status of stakeholder households living within the Lower Zambezi REDD+ Project. The choice of the survey method was influenced by the desire for uniformity across both surveys as well as the need to collect standard quantitative data that would be comparable with that collected during the baseline survey for purposes of measuring progress/change or the lack thereof. Therefore, the same standard questionnaire was used in both the baseline and the follow-up surveys to collect data from project beneficiaries. Both primary and secondary data were collected. Primary data were collected using mobile based application from 200 respondents who were both purposively and systematically randomly sampled. Secondary data were collected from project documents.