Asking the ‘Why’ Question: Using Qualitative Inquiry to Improve Food Security in Uganda

By: Derrick Aaron Nsibirwa, Research and Learning Advisor for the Graduating to Resilience Activity in Western Uganda, interviewed by Savannah Smith, Gender and Youth Activity (GAYA)

Listen to the 7-minute interview here

In this interview, the GAYA team speaks with Derrick Aaron Nsibirwa to learn more about his experience as a participant in GAYA’s Cultivating Inclusion for Food Security (Cultivate) Fellowship. Through the Cultivate fellowship, field-based emergency and resilience food security implementers strengthen their capacity to use qualitative methods to increase gender and youth inclusion. Learn more about the GAYA Cultivate Fellowship here.

A couple sieving grain produce together. Photo courtesy of AVSI Foundation Uganda.

Could you please give us a quick introduction to your program?

“The Graduating to Resilience Activity is a seven year project… employing the graduation approach, and emphasizing the women plus approach (which focuses on women and youth as an entry point into a household). Its goal is to graduate households (that’s extremely poor and food insecure households) into conditions of food security and resilience.”

Whenever you first heard about the fellowship, why did you want to participate?

“Our quantitative arm is very, very strong, but the qualitative aspect was light… So [the GAYA Cultivate Fellowship] presented an opportunity for our activity to actually broaden its application of qualitative methods of data collection and analysis to better interpret graduation results… It’s very important to employ qualitative methods of data collection and analysis, to kind of find out the ‘why’ question. Because we already know the ‘what’ question through the quantitative methods.”

As part of your participation in the Cultivate Fellowship, you participated in a qualitative inquiry project. Could you share a bit more about the qualitative inquiry approach you took? Why did you choose this approach?

“Our research question was actually to explore if spousal and wider household participation impacts chances for a household to graduate… We settled on using, first of all, the traditional qualitative data collection approaches, but also integrated the most significant change approach. Because we looked at it as being able to actually articulate some nuances between households that are progressing and households that are in graduation.

There are four levels to graduation.

• We have households that have never graduated.
• We have households that have retrogressed (so that means the household that has graduated once or twice, but failed to graduate the third time…).
• Then we have households that are progressing (those are the ones that have met graduation at least once, and they are moving on well).
• Then we have those that have graduated (those that have met graduation three consecutive times).”

The most significant change approach was a visual to help us… explore and articulate those nuances between those households.”

A couple jointly running wholesale business. Photo courtesy of AVSI Foundation Uganda.

I’m curious if there were any big “Aha moments” for you. Did you gain any key insights or discoveries?

”Using the most significant change approach, we actually found out… why some households retrogress while others graduate and progress…

• Households that actually graduate are households where the spouse completely has no problem with taking on some work that is deemed as the role of a woman. Let’s say washing dishes or caring for the kids.
• Yet households that have retrogressed, or that have never met the graduation criteria, are households whereby the husband still rigidly thinks that a role, this role of fetching water, is primarily for a woman. ‘If there’s no water, I’m not going to the well.’”

Spouses from the households that were showing positive results and graduation, their spouses confidently and explicitly shared that they find no issue with taking on extra work if their wife is engaged in our organization activities… Their strength in believing that if they help the spouse the household is going to get better actually highlighted a difference between households that retrogress and households that progress… With [the] help of a partner, households are able to navigate both their basic and household roles and also participate in other activities, including ours but also other economic activities that help bring in income into their households.”

A husband participating in raring household livestock. Photo courtesy of AVSI Foundation Uganda.

Have there been opportunities to adapt the program’s work, based on what you learned through the fellowship or your qualitative inquiry project?

“[My team was] very, very intrigued and impressed [by] the use of qualitative data… Traditionally qualitative data has gotten the stick because of the question about its rigor, then about its biasness, things of this sort. But when they understood how data is collected, handled, analyzed, and interpreted they got to appreciate its rigor.

Now the wider team understands the use of qualitative inquiry in project implementation. So, people have appreciated… how you interpret qualitative data, and how it can be used to explain the quantitative results that you already have… Furthermore, the administration has always been interested in integrating qualitative inquiry, but from our GAYA participation and the outcome, it’s now more committed… So the change has been a cultural one, not primarily a project- or activity-based change.”

Household jointly planning with their Graduating to Resilience coach. Photo courtesy of AVSI Foundation Uganda.

If you could share one piece of wisdom with another food security implementer who wants to make their program more inclusive, what would you tell them?

“Food and nutrition programs lean too much on their quantitative data and finding statistics… Nutrition is primarily a qualitative aspect in a household… It’s not about the amount of food you eat, but the quality of food you eat… So my advice is [that] embracing qualitative inquiry to assist or to work in tandem with quantitative is very, very important for any food and nutrition program.

Understanding traditional community and society dynamics also helps in inclusion. You will not understand why a certain group of people is not represented in your program until you understand their relationship within the community… Particularly [for] a program that is looking to kind of right / correct the societal shortcomings and errors when it comes to gender and youth inclusion, I think is very important to embed qualitative inquiry.

We feed differently as cultures. Though we can stay next door to each other, in a household, there are different rules. And if you only concentrate on how much food has been distributed at the distribution point, without reaching the household and understanding how the food is prepared, how the food is shared… you will fall short of solving the nutrition and food security outcomes in a society.”