Listening to African Voices - FPZ

find, for example, many participants from Liberia, SierraLeone and Guinea Bissau. The identification of persons fromvery small immigrant populations (Sudan, Tanzania, Somalia)also had limited success. At the same time, the proportionsinterviewed from other countries were above 60%. We drewthe conclusion that numerous participants from certain communities(e.g. Guinea or Mali) lived in Hamburg at the timeof the interviews without registration. At the same time, itseemed that members of other communities were registeredin Hamburg, but resided elsewhere.3.6.9. Plan is an unknown organisation to migrant communitiesin GermanyMost participants had never heard of Plan and did not havea particular interest in a survey carried out by an institutionthat they were not familiar with and that had no positivereputation for supporting immigrant populations in Germany.3.7. Limits of the study3.7.1. Unique focus on Sub-Saharan AfricaThe study focused exclusively on countries in Sub-SaharanAfrica. Other countries where the practice is known to existwere not taken into consideration. We did not include theimmigrant population from Egypt and Yemen in the researcheven though both countries have integrated the issue in thequestionnaire of the Demographic and Health Surveys andhave presented solid estimations for the prevalence ratesof FGM/C in their countries (96% for Egypt and 27% forYemen).The number of registered immigrants from Yemen is verysmall in Hamburg (22 men and seven women). We could notfocus our resources on such a small community. The Egyptiancommunity is more relevant in terms of numbers andthe high prevalence rate in the country. There are officially1249 immigrants of Egyptian origin registered in Hamburg.Most of them are men (857), but among the 392 registeredgirls and women, there are 105 girls below 18 years of age.It is recommended that the further study include or investigatespecifically the knowledge of, attitudes toward andways of practicing FGM/C in the Egyptian immigrant communityin Hamburg.networks (church, mosque, integration classes, communityevents and meetings) or who abstain from visiting typicalmeeting places (Afro shops, main station, betting agencies)were less likely to be interviewed. At the same time, personsacquainted with one of the researchers were more likelyto be interviewed. The snowball sampling and the effortsundertaken to collect data from various districts of Hamburgaimed to balance this effect. It is clear, however, that theunfeasibility of random sampling reduces the validity of thedata and has to be taken into consideration when interpretingthe results.3.7.3. Oral reports as the only sourceThe qualitative and quantitative research tools allowed onlythe collection of data based on oral testimonies. Previousstudies on FGM/C, however, have indicated that verbalreports can be biased. This is usually due to efforts ofparticipants to provide socially desirable answers (see for exampleCellule de Planification et de Statistique du Ministèrede la Santé, Direction Nationale de la Statistique et del’Informatique du Ministère de l’Économie, de l’Industrie etdu Commerce et al. 2006). It can also be linked to the lack ofknowledge. Circumcised women, for example, are sometimesnot aware about the form of FGM/C they have undergoneand give inexact descriptions of what has been done (seefor example Asefaw 2007). Furthermore, some of the studyparticipants feared negative sanctions after respondingtruthfully to certain questions. This makes it likely that someof the data collected during the current project is subject toreporting bias. We tried to mitigate this limitation by takingnote of non-verbal reactions and interview compliance andby excluding dubious responses from the data analysis.3.7.4. Small sample sizes for some countriesThe sample sizes of immigrant populations from Eritrea,Sudan, Tanzania, Somalia, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, andLiberia are too small for an in-depth analysis. For the firstfour countries, the small number of immigrants reachedcan be explained through the small population size of thecommunities in Hamburg. For the three other countries, werecommend further studies to gather additional information.3.7.2. No random sampling for the quantitative surveyAs described in section 3.3.2.1, we had no means to conducta probability survey for the collection of the quantitativedata. It can be assumed that the probability of gettinginterviewed was not the same for all immigrants fromSub-Saharan Africa. Community members outside social20Listening to African Voices