Poverty Dimensions of Public Governance and Forest Management ...

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5. Research Activities
5.1 Research Methodology
In broad terms, two methodological approaches can be used in a study of this type:
• A case study approach
• A statistical approach
The former is appropriate where one wishes to investigate new relationships and/or develop new
understandings. The latter is more favoured where the aim is to test a specific hypothesis or a
model. The present study is of the former type, and thus a case study approach has been used.
A statistical approach would be doubly contentious in the context of the present research. Since
the data was predominantly about farmer perceptions, it contains a lot of ‘noise’. Such data is
better sorted out into classes rather than as averages. Because of this, there has been no attempt to
carry out analysis of regression. Economic researchers often ask farmers to give their acreages,
and on the basis of their perceptions come out with ordered data indicating averages. 11 This is
further analysed through regression analysis. In a situation such as the present, this approach
would be fundamentally misleading. Farmers often do not know the acreage or yields of their
farms but are pressured into responding in particular ways, whether or not these are appropriate to
their circumstances. Data on large holdings is likely to be particularly inaccurate, given the
tendency to exaggerate.
This justifies the preference in the present study for the sorting of responses into data classes and
bands by frequency, rather than by statistics derived from the mean. If such statistics had been
required then this would have to have been done by measuring out field plots, take measures of
farmers yields at harvest time, keep weekly figures of labour time spent in the field and weekly
budgets of farm expenditure. This would have been far beyond the allocation of time and funding
for this scooping study.
11 A case in point – to the extent that it is evidence-based – may be the draft Ghana Poverty Reduction
Strategy (‘GPRS’, February 2002). This asserts that “the average farm size is small (less than 1.2 ha).
Hired labour is hardly used by this group. The average food crop farmer has limited contact with the
product market and is unlikely to use fertiliser, insecticides, high yielding seed varieties or irrigation-based
techniques of production”. These “facts” are not corroborated by our report which found high use of labour
by all farmers, and complex situations in other input usage related to historical policy and ecological
factors, and market integration.
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