View/Open - Sokoine University of Agriculture

variables (Ys) and the explanatory variables (X 1, X 2.... X K ) (Wooldridge 2002). It canbe presented as:Y = 0 + 1 X 1i + 2 X 2i + …. + K X Ki + e i 0 = Regression constant 1 = Regression coefficient for variable X 1 K = Regression coefficient for variable X KK = Number of independent variablese i = Residual (Error)3.5 Limitations and ChallengesWe encountered quite a few limitations and challenges when carrying out or research,however, only those we consider the most limiting ones will be mentioned here.Although probably the case for most master students, time and means became anissue. With a starting point of three months available to do the fieldwork, due totroubles with getting the right research permits which allowed us to go out in thefield, coupled with problems within the project coordinators at Sokoine with gettingfunding on time, we in effect were left with just slightly more than two months tocomplete our fieldwork. In addition, given our tight schedule we did not have theopportunity to test the questionnaire before starting the data collection, nor were weable to cross-check and verify information as much as we had hoped to. This appliedparticularly to the very complex forest and land tenure system present at the villagelevel, which we rather had to gain knowledge on as we went along and from theremake the necessary adjustments and follow up questions. By using two assistants wewere able to complete all the data collection we had planned. Through meetings everynight to make adjustments in accordance with new knowledge gained, we howeverstill feel that our dataset is of high quality.Another challenge we had was in terms of language. Due to the fact that allcommunication had to be done in Swahili we were both assigned and made use of atranslator. Regardless of the English capabilities of an interpreter, there is always arisk of loss of data when having to go through an extra person before the information65