CONTACTOS SATURNO-SATURNO

I conducted FG interviews with PPs. Since rights issues are sensitive topics, pre-existing and acquaintance groups were utilised. Specifically, I used the FFSs, since (a) they had been meeting regularly (every two or three months) and thus could be considered as acquaintance groups; and (b) I happened to have conducted participation observation on them in both research sites and thus was able to build some rapport with their members.

I originally envisaged conducting FG interviews with the VDCs. But after realising that three of the seven VDC members were the government-appointed villager leader, deputy village leader and secretary, I foresaw power asymmetry between

government-appointed members and ordinary members who were elected by villagers. Thus I planned to conduct an interview with only four ordinary members. Despite the smaller number than the rule of thumb size of six to ten participants for FGs (Morgan, 1997), I thought and expected that because of their role as VDCs they would be highly involved and thus the group dynamics would be generated. However, on the day of the first interview with a VDC, only two members attended, as the other two were out of village because of their participation in training by another NGO. As a result, I decided to include the villager leader and the deputy village leader in the interview mainly

because it was near the end of the first fieldwork and thus I did not want to miss this opportunity. However and not surprisingly, I found that those government-appointed VDC members had quite contrasting ideas with those of the ordinary VDC members and that one of the latter did not seem to be able to express her opinions candidly in front of the former, and this indeed indicated the power asymmetry between them. Because of this experience and since there were only four ordinary VDC members per village and some of them might be out of village or busy with other commitments, I decided to interview the VDC members individually after this interview.

FG interviews were used in order to gain a wide variety of views of PPs and a feel of collective sense-making, particularly of their change of perspective on their rights to development (Morgan, 1997; Bryman, 2008). I observed that their discussion was stimulated through mutual learning. On the other hand, as typically seen in FGs, there was “a tendency toward conformity” (Morgan, 1997, p. 239-53) where

participants repeated the same answers as ones previously mentioned. This tendency might have been enhanced by the cultural tendency of risk aversion.

FGs were partly stimulated by a participatory exercise (that is, the Venn diagram for analysing the power relationships between PPs, local government and economic land concessionaries)10 (Kumar, 2002).Such “participant-produced images can …. be used as stimuli in the conduct of interviews” (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007, p. 149). On the other hand, “PRA [one method of which is the Venn diagram] utilises FGs in

combination with visual and verbal techniques that have not been examined to ascertain their limitations” (Campbell, 2001, p. 385, italics original and comments in brackets added). However, as far as the FGs of this research are concerned, I found more active discussion in the Venn diagram exercise than through the verbal questions alone. This is because instead of the research assistant or myself asking questions, which made them shy, I let them work on the exercise by discussing it together after the initial explanation and with on-going facilitation. Hence, the whole discussion during this exercise was also transcribed, translated and used as essential data. Only after they finished the exercise did I ask some probing questions.

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See Appendix 2 for the final version of focus group interview schedules for project participants. Note that there were a few versions used for the different focus groups.

Photo1: Venn Diagram Exercise in the First Research Site

Moderating FGs is a complex and skilled task (Morgan, 1997). Moreover, this study combines FGs with the participatory exercise, making them even more complex. For example, the participants needed to be enabled to come up with the right size of each entity in the Venn diagram exercise in accordance with their discussion. Due to my limited Cambodian language I needed translation assistance, yet translating in the middle of a FG would inevitably stifle the free-flowing discussion (Bujra, 2006). Therefore, I trained the research assistant to moderate FGs. After that I continuously coached him, since, for example, he tended to intentionally lead participants to give particular answers by providing some example answers when receiving little response from them.

As a novice researcher, I myself initially had this same urge for obtaining expected answers from participants, but I later realised that participants’ limited responses were partly because the questions themselves or words used in the questions were too difficult for them to understand or their current level of understanding of the topics (especially rights-related ones) was low. Hence, I continuously modified the questions themselves, words used in questions, and processes toward improvement through my personal reflection as well as dialoguing with the research assistant. Nevertheless, it was a challenge to strike a balance between how much I should lead them to answer within the parameters of this research by giving some examples and how much I should let them tell whatever they wanted to tell, especially for the questions related to the abstract notions of rights (See the FG questions for Day 2 in Appendix 2). Related to this, I also noticed that PPs did not really give abstract answers to my abstract questions, but rather told their ‘stories’ based on their concrete

experiences. Hence I modified my abstract questions to questions that were more amenable to the facilitation of such story telling (See the FG questions for Day 2 in Appendix 2).

Each FG lasted for one and a half to two hours and was conducted twice (one session on each day). Morgan (1997) recommends over-recruiting interview participants by 20% in case of some absence. I originally recruited ten people from each FFS given the rule of thumb size of six to ten participants. For the first sessions, nine to ten showed up. But for the second sessions six to nine actually showed up. Each local transcriber, who transcribed and translated audio-recorded data, joined most of their responsible FGs in order to take notes of who spoke so that they could identify who spoke in the audio record. They also simultaneously interpreted interviews for me, as the research assistant was busy with his facilitation responsibilities.

I conducted the FGs prior to individual interviews in order to select PPs judged as worth being investigated through subsequent individual interviews by

quasi-theoretical sampling and to build rapport with such persons prior to individual interviews.

In addition to PPs, I also conducted FG interviews with CEFs, CEOs and the GALO of the field-level offices. FGs were formed based on their positions, to foster a non-threatening environment. Hence, CEFs composed one group (four to six persons), whilst CEOs and a GALO, who were of a similar rank, together composed one group

(three people for each research site). I modified interview schedules in accordance with the roles of the interviewees. Although the sizes of some of these FGs were smaller than the rule of thumb size, because of their knowledge gained through their experiences in the field they were highly involved in discussion. Interviews with them lasted between one and a half hours and three hours.

As Table 4 below shows, I conducted nine FGs in total.

Table 4: Focus Group Interviews

Research Site 1 Research Site 2 Total

Village 1 Village 2 Village 3 Village 4

VDCs 1 1

FFSs 1 1 1 1 4

CEFs 1 1 2

CEOs and GALOs 1 1 2

Total 5 4 9