METHODOLOGY

Sampling

This field research was conducted to determine the alterations in women’s work comparing time allocation sampling (Bernard, R.H and Killworth, P.D, 1993) in three age-sets: 20-29 (pre child-bearing), 30-39 (child-bearing) and 40-69, (post child-bearing). The study specifically aims to note the differences in women’s’ value in response to globalization, personal achievement, and value held within the family unit. Collecting instantaneous spot-checking (Mulder M.B., 1985) in four communities, a total of ten households were sampled on a weekly basis collecting data of activities and whereabouts of all members of the family. The data collection spanned a period of ten weeks for an average of ten samples per household for a total of forty samples per week, and four hundred time allocations in total.

Instantaneous spot-checking research sampling attempts to assess the full range of daily human activities. From the data gathered, it is the role of the researcher to analyze and further infer individual time allocation from day to day, family to family. By doing this, the researcher can assess the role of leisure time and division of labor by sex (Scaglion, 1986) in order to understand the livelihoods of the subjects.

Typically, using this method of data collection, the researcher selects the unit of analysis; in this case I used the household (vs. the individual). The idea is that with the ethnographer using randomly chosen times, when they approach the subjects, there is no prior acknowledgement. Accordingly, if the ethnographer is unannounced, the data will be less biased, as the subject has less time to alter their behavior based on embarrassment, or simply sub-consciously. Using a coding for the various activities, sex, age and time of day, the categories of work range from: social, work, and domestic work, et cetera.

Using an ethnographic approach, each house was selected in a convenience sampling using the elementary school as the nuclei (a landmark that is present in all four communities). Ranging the travel time from one household sample to another, there was an average of fifteen minutes travel in-between one house and the next, the farthest from the nuclei being an hour walking. Sampling hours were randomly drawn on a span from 7:00 and 19:00, a twelve-hour period during daylight.

Interviews

In addition to the time allocation data collection, I performed one-on-one interviews and three interviews with mother and kin throughout the four communities sampled for a total of forty interviews. The interviewees were selected based on each individual’s role within the community. In the department of Intibucá, there has been a major shift in trainings given by outside agencies such as Save the Children and PLAN Honduras since the early 1990s (how do I source this, it was said in one of the interviews), of which contributed to increased leadership seen in men, women and youth. Because of the outside agency trainings in all four communities, and their alleged impact, I also held interviews with some of these organizations that are common in the communities, and based in the department of Intibucá, Honduras.

Using a semi-structured interview, I used set questions that were asked of all interviewees and allowed the interviewee to expand, share personal experiences and stories, in a dialogue-format. The interviewees ranged in age, by age-set and by gender in order to compare answers of each accordingly. The interviews were informal and often were held while doing other daily activities such that the interviewee felt comfortable and was not taken away from their duties and other daily activities.

Because the research is aimed to diagnose the determinants of women’s time allocation within this rural setting, as often as possible, interviews would be held with multiple members of the same family, varying in generation. My questions varied from life goals, family relations, current working life in comparison to that of their parents and conditions of the community and value changes throughout the generations.

Interviewees were selected based on request and their role within the community. On survey (the first visit to the communities), I created an asset map with help from the older school children. Asset mapping is where you draw out the boundaries of the community and write down who lives in which house, more or less gaining an idea of what people do (size of farm land), and family size et cetera. Some community members heard that I was doing interviews with other community members, and requested to have an interview as well, which I did for a total of five interviews (all of which were in the same community, Community C).

In order to conduct this research, I applied for the exemption claim number two, which was granted in spring of 2011 by the Institutional Review Board at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Additionally, permission for this research was requested and granted by an international non-profit, non-governmental and non-religious organization Amigos de las Américas where I was employed (do I mention that I was employed as a Project Supervisor?) for the duration of the research.

Subjects (what would I title this, and/or would this part go here?)

            The subjects are considered all members of the four communities: which are referred to as A, B, C, and D based on the days that they were visited. Because I was working as a Project Supervisor for Amigos de las Américas in these four communities, my observation time was limited to set days of the week. Accordingly, Monday was spent in A, Tuesday, B, Wednesday, C and Thursday was spent in D. The communities were selected at random from a cohort of twenty-eight communities and population size ranged in each from two hundred to eight hundred community members. Comparatively the other communities ranged in size from two hundred to over a thousand. The four communities are located in mountainous regions of the department of Intibucá, Honduras. Communities A, B and C are within the municipality of Yamaranguila, which Community D lies within the municipality of La Esperanza, (also the capital of the department). 

BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING.