CONCLUSIONES Y RECOMENDACIONES

Majority of the studies in the Social Sciences have direct bearing on real people in situations that are not simulated to agree with practices in laboratories by scholars in pure sciences. This situation raises ethical questions in terms of the link between the researcher and the respondents. The researcher took into consideration the respondents and communities‟ right of participation in the study. The consent of chiefs was sought and got. Oral consents of other respondents were also obtained. To this extent, the respondents were clearly informed about the purpose of the study. Respondents‟ identities and views were protected, particularly those of the crime victims involved. The community members were treated politely and with considerable humility. They were relaxed and not compelled to do or say what they ordinarily did not want to do or say throughout the conduct of this study. The respondents were well protected against any harm and they were explicitly informed of their right to withdraw from the study even after signing the consent forms. Besides, on the publication of the final copy of this work in learned journals, policy makers are expected to use its numerous findings in providing solutions to community residents‟ crime reporting challenges such that formal and informal justice systems take advantage of the latest intelligence contained in this study to evolve reporting norms and sustainable public safety policies for the community.

125 3.8 Limitations and Strengths

3.8.1 Limitations

A perfect method of investigating social reality does not exist. All research methods in use in social science, notably quantitative or qualitative, have their inherent weaknesses. Just as it is with other research methods, the methods that were employed in this study have their weaknesses and limitations.

3.8.2 Quantitative Instrument

Therefore, this work is not without its own limitations. The following realities underlined the weaknesses of this study which were discussed at both the specific and general levels.

The intermixture of urban, semi-urban and rural settings for the study created some problems which brought some limitations to the study. Lagos was divided into urban, semi-urban and rural areas to facilitate comparative analyses. On the field, it was discovered that traceable streets exist only in the urban and semi urban areas. Mostly in Ibeju Lekki, communities were in dominant use, not streets. It took some time, working with educated Ibeju Lekki indigenes to substitute communities for streets effectively before data gathering began.

While on the field, research assistants found that most Yoruba respondents in semi urban and rural areas of Lagos did not willingly want to accept that they had been victims of crime. In Yoruba, the meaning of crime is Oran. Thus, a criminal is Odaran. The moment the question is put „Nje awon odaran ti seyin ni jamba kan tele ri?‟ (Meaning have you ever been a crime victim?), in the quest of respondents to prove their spiritual protection against any form of misfortune, they usually responded by answering, in both semi urban and rural areas of Lagos, that „Olorun koni jeki nse konge awon odaran ati oran won‟ (I reject criminals and their evil deeds in the name of God.) But further probes into which kind of crime they had experienced

126 caused them to divulge diverse crimes such as robbery, assault, stealing, rape, etc. This widespread reluctance to provide the true picture of the victimisation experiences of respondents constituted initial challenge for data collection.

Some of the problems that usually characterise surveys which an aspect of this study shares are:

o The length of the quantitative instrument. The questionnaire for this study consisted of 112 items covering seven pages. Majority of respondents, particularly the lowly educated ones complained bitterly about the volume of the instrument and the incursion which their completion made into their business time.

o Moreover, most survey respondents openly demanded for gratification across the three divisions into which Lagos was put because they claimed that attending to the instrument wasted the time they would have used to look for money were they allowed focusing attention on their businesses. As a result, they wanted reimbursement for the time they spent completing the questionnaire. The negotiation of this took some time. On some occasions, however, the researcher acceded to providing soft drinks on respondents‟ complaint of intense heat. In sum, this is indicative of the level of economic hardship on the one hand and pervasive ignorance about the gains of research to human development on the other.

3.8.3 Qualitative Instrument

The challenges that were thrown up by qualitative instrument are not similar to those of quantitative instrument. For instance:

 Most respondents to qualitative instrument were opposed to the use of electronic recorders.

Victims of serious crimes were unwilling to disclose their victimisation experiences in a face to face interview setting, particularly with individuals they did not know prior to the

127 interview. Their unwillingness might have arisen from the fear that these unknown individuals might want to know more about their weaknesses so as to launch yet another attack on them. This made the exercise a bit more challenging. Consequently, the researcher swapped research assistants by making them work in areas where they are more familiar with respondents. This strategy helped the study to make remarkable inroads into the respondents who were hitherto unwilling to share information with research assistants.

 Moreover, between Monday, October 22 and Wednesday, October 25 2012, members of the Lagos Traffic Law Task Force arrested motorcycle „okada‟ riders in a bid to enforce compliance with the Lagos traffic law forbidding okada riding in some named roads in Lagos that was then newly passed. Following the exchange of gunshots between the police and hoodlums who had hijacked the protest, data gathering efforts in most parts of the study sites became unsafe. Research assistants were scared. Therefore, the researcher directed all research assistants to seek safe escape routes back to their homes. In some ways, data gathering process was disrupted by the panic which the disturbances brought to bear on community dwellers‟ daily routine activities.

3.8.4 Strengths

This research has its strengths drawn from the influences of both quantitative and qualitative methods. The major strength of this study is its combination of both quantitative and qualitative methods. While the quantitative method makes for more generalizable outcomes (Sandelowski, 1999), qualitative method is powerful in gaining insights into the nature of human affairs by aiding the study of subtle nuances in attitudes and behaviours as social processes are examined over time (Rubin & Babbie, 2008). Besides, the large sample (n = 1040) of respondents who completed the survey questionnaire, promotes the reliability of its findings.

128 Moreover, in practical terms, police recorded crime is, as known, not equivalent to “all”

crime. A well-known fact is that a large proportion of “all” crime remains unrecorded. Recorded crime may vary significantly as a consequence of dissimilar reporting rates and recording practices (Heiskanen, 2010). The above consideration underscored the leading importance of victim survey in this study. van Dijk et al., (2007) see in victim surveys the capacity to provide more extensive and comparable data of criminal victimisation of households than the police records, since they capture also crimes that are not reported to the police.

129 CHAPTER FOUR

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter focuses on the social, economic, demographic and cultural attributes of the sample population. It also discusses the socio-demographic characteristics of respondents and victimisation, respondents‟ reasons for their victimisation and other issues such as the correlates of crime reporting among victims. Complementary qualitative data were also discussed.