THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

Kathmandu and elsewhere, and there were signiffcant changes at village
level which flowed from them (as Chapter Eight will show).
me Final hslat@t
We returned to Tamaphok at the end of April, we1 1 aware that after
ell the disruptions there had been in our lives, our remaining research
time was limited. We needed to supplement the informal participant
observation whfch had been our main form of social research to date with
a small survey and other data gathering measures. With the help of a
research assistant in Kathmandu we had put together a list of questions
which we hoped could form the basis of a survey, We discussed these in
some detail with Bhim Bahadur, In many ways we learnt more from these
discussions than we did from carrying out the survey itself. Once we
had finalised our questions, we used stencils and the schoolts very
basic printing facilities to run off forms for the survey which we could
fill in as we talked to people (see Appendix III),
We conducted the survey in 20 houses, a household each morning, in
the company of Bhim Bahadur. We tried to randomize our sample to a
certain extent by setting off in a different direction from our house
each day with the intention of going to a 'rich' household or a 'poort
one. There was an obvious bias in that Bhim Bahadur judged the economic
level of the house and chose whom we should go to see. On the other
hand, when we got to the house he had in mind, if no-one was in (as wes
qulte frequently the case) we would go on to the nearest neighbour until
we found somewhere with people at home. Bhim Bahadur's presence was
very helpful as a mediator between us and the people to whom we spoke.
He could explain things when they did not understand the language we