Methods Toolbox

Toolbox Contents

Overarching issues

• The ethics of poverty research
• Confronting bias and assumptions
• Research and children
• Research and older people
• Research and impairment and disability
• Research and HIV/AIDS
• Research and conflict
• Developing international research partnerships

Designing research

• The research design process
• Types of poverty-oriented research
• Selecting a unit of analysis
• The quantitative-qualitative distinction

Combining methods

• Combining methods and triangulation
• Summary of common research methods
• How to choose which methods or mix of methods to use?
• Strengths and weaknesses of key methods
• When are key methods appropriate?
• Additional strengths and weaknesses of participatory methods

Collecting data

• Participatory approaches
  • Strengths and weaknesses of participatory approaches
  • Online links to guides for methods specific to participatory research
• Livelihoods approaches
  • Livelihoods introduction
  • Link to DFID Sustainable Livelihoods Framework Diagram
    (Word doc)
  • Link to DFID Sustainable Livelihoods Framework
    (Links to www.livelihoods.org)
  • Principles of livelihoods research
  • Examples of the livelihoods framework in practice
  • Livelihoods checklist
• Focus groups and interviews
  • Methods for focus group discussions
  • Interviews
  • Interviewing techniques
• Case studies
• Life histories

Analysing data

• Coding and analysis
• Political analysis
  • Introduction and theoretical survey
  • Rights-based development
  • Political capital
  • Researching the politics of chronic poverty
  • Social exclusion
• Quantitative analysis
  • Introduction - quantitative analysis of poverty
  • Poverty as a dynamic phenomenon
  • Measuring and studying chronic poverty based on panel data
  • Analysing dynamic poverty issues based on repeated cross-sectional data

• Creating and Interpreting Contour plots using DASP and GNUPLOT (pdf document - 500KB). This notes describes how contour plots, which are two dimensional representations of welfare distributions that can be regarded as a continuous analogue to transition matrices, can be creating using the Stata package DASP and the graphics package gnuplot. The procedure is illustrated with panel data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey from 2002 to 2006. Also related source data: VNexample.dat (18KB) and VNexample.dta (27KB)

Writing up

Dissemination

• Policy engagement and media influence resource pack

Resources and Glossary

Contributors