Gate - the The development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC)

Computer Training
The management of data in community assessments generally requires the recording and sorting of
extensive text data to facilitate rapid and thorough retrieval and analysis. For this reason, team
members were trained to use the computer software, ATLAS/ti, for coding and text data retrieval.
The essential coding and retrieval aspects of the program are very easy to learn, and the process of
coding is an important early step in data categorizing and analysis. More complicated maneuvers
with the software are unnecessary in this kind of data-gathering. Later in the training, the team
learned to use ANTHROPAC, a software program designed to process free listing, pile sorting and
rating data.
Most of the dRPC team have laptops, and are developing good practical computer skills, particularly
writing text into the WORD processor. It is not expected that the additional data-gatherers in the
other states will be able to work with computers, so the dRPC primary team will bear the burden of
writing up interviews and observation notes, and coding the data in ATLAS/ti.
The Community Assessment Data-Gathering
Beginning Friday, November 26 th , the assessment teams went out for field work in three separate
groups. Contacts with governmental HIV/AIDS program units began with interviewing at the
Ministry of the FCT, with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Program officer for
HIV/AIDS.. The interview covered a wide range of activities concerning HIV/AIDS programs and
planning activities, including the structural system reaching from NACA to FACA (Federal Action
Committee on AIDS) and out to the grassroots structures, which are the Local Action Committees
for AIDS (LACAs). There are six LACAS in the FCT (see description below).
Networking Organizations
During the first discussions within our data-gathering team we had gathered lists of organizations
involved in HIV/AIDS (free listing, as described above). In the lists we found that there are
specialized (NGOs) whose main functions are to develop communications and networking among
the many different types of organizations. Our teams interviewed two of these organizations very
early in our data-gathering process: CiSNHAN (Civil Society Network on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria
has offices throughout the nation, and in the FCT it has a directory of 56 organizations who are
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