In collecting quantitative data, a survey questionnaire was used. The questionnaire was predominantly structured, only one item in the questionnaire was open ended in order to allow debriefing so that participants could also have their say away from the largely predetermined choices of answers synonymous with a structured questionnaire. I personally devised this research instrument in order to satisfy the unique research questions of this particular study. The questionnaire had four sections. The first section sought to solicit demographic information such as the household size, age of the household principal, the level of education and gender of the household principal. The above variables had a very important analytical significance. Previous empirical literature has revealed that most of the remittances have been used for consumption as opposed to productive investment (Martin 2007; Ratha et al 2009; Deelen and Vasuprasat 2010).
The information gathered in the demographic section was very useful in analyzing the different ways in which households use their remittances. In addition, the information assisted in finding possible explanations as to why most of the remittances went towards consumption as opposed to productive investment.
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The second section was soliciting information about household members in the Diaspora. The information gathered here included the number of household members in South Africa, their age as well as the number of years they have spent working and leaving in South Africa. The analytical significance of this information was that it could give us a perspective as to the amount of progress that could be expected from the household. For example, a household with a high number of migrant workers or with migrant workers who have spent more years working in South Africa would be expected to have achieved a lot in terms of improving livelihoods as opposed to their counterparts.
The third section solicited information on household livelihoods. The first objective of this study was to examine the developmental contribution of remittances in rural Matabeleland North and their potential to serve as a sustainable livelihood strategy. In the best interest of achieving the aforementioned objective, it was necessary to have an understanding of the livelihoods in Tsholotsho District. As such, the information solicited in the third section revealed current livelihood strategies as well as skills and capabilities that the people of Tsholotsho District possessed and are presumably helpful in the continuous improvement of livelihoods. In addition, the section sought to gather data that could be useful in understanding other livelihood strategies in the absence of remittances. Given the aforementioned, the role and potential of remittances in building sustainable livelihoods could be possibly determined. Gathering data on livelihoods had an analytical significance in that it could assist in finding ways to combine migrant remittances with other livelihood assets that household already possessed. According to the SLA, migrant remittances constitute financial resources which could be combined with other livelihood assets to come up with more sustainable livelihoods such as co-operatives or microenterprises. In addition, skills and capabilities are human assets that could be combined with financial assets to
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achieve sustainable livelihoods. Therefore, it could be argued that the third section of the survey questionnaire had an analytical significance in that it solicited information about the crucial livelihood assets as well as the prevailing livelihoods status. These are paramount in the creation of sustainable livelihoods as well as in the formulation of development interventions.
Other objectives of this study were to assess the opportunities, skills and capabilities present in the receiving communities that are necessary in directing remittances towards productive investment as well as to ascertain the possibility and extent of a multiplier effect upon non-receiving households within the community as a result of remittance flows. To meet the above objectives, the final section of the survey questionnaire solicited information on the opportunities, remittance use and the multiplier effect. Most of the previous studies lamented the failure to save or use remittances for productive investment (Kupur 2003; Block 2006; Maphosa 2007; Tinajero 2009). These studies did not survey the availability of opportunities that households could take advantage of in order to use their remittance productively. Having identified this gap, the final section of the research instrument was designed to gather information on the availability of opportunities together with the different ways in which people use their remittances and the possible bottlenecks that hinder their efforts to put migrant remittances into productive use. In addition, the section solicited data on the multiplier effect.
Other studies (Kapur 2003; Newland and Patrick 2004; De Haas 2005; Bradford et al 2008) have covered this subject however they addressed this superficially. This section therefore sought to address the concept of the multiplier effect in order to achieve the objectives of this study and cover the observable empirical gaps in migration-development literature.
Qualitative data for this study was collected using unstructured interviews. While in-depth interviews were the official qualitative instruments used, perhaps it is important to acknowledge
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that observation was used as a resource which also allowed for some reflexivity. Drawing from the research questions of this study, two interview guides were drafted. One interview guide was for the five key informants in Tsholotsho District while the other was for the ten migrant workers in South Africa. The interviews with key informants in Tsholotsho were inspired by the SLA approach in that the creation of sustainable livelihoods is affected by broader structural issues in the local economy. Therefore, to understand the choices made by households in the way they used their remittances and how they were affected by structural constraints, required the use of in-depth interviews. Given that in-depth interviews are characterized by giving rich and holistic information from the perspective of the respondents, they were used in this study to compliment the survey questionnaire, which on its own could not give a holistic view. In addition, the use of interviews with the migrant workers ensured that information collected using a survey questionnaire from the households could be validated. Therefore, one could argue that the use of in-depth interviews alongside the survey questionnaires may have assisted in realizing high standards of validity and reliability owing to the complimentary effect of both these instruments.
It could also be argued that through the convergence and corroboration of data collected using both in-depth interviews and survey questionnaires, stronger empirical evidence could be provided in support of the given conclusions of the study. Having given a detailed explanation for the research instruments, the following section will detail how the research was executed.