In the two years since its launch, WEE-DiFine has established a portfolio of 18 research projects spanning nine countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, WEE-DiFine supports three projects in India—a country deeply affected by COVID-19. To better understand the challenges these teams faced and how they were dealing with project setbacks, we interviewed members of each of the research teams.
While teams experienced challenges due to the pandemic, we learned that teams are agile and also able to take learnings from the last two years and apply them to other projects. Moreover, being forced to slow down created space to challenge existing assumptions around gender and social norms.
Pivoting to remote data collection
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, government-mandated lockdowns coupled with physical distancing precautions made in-person activities difficult, if not impossible. All three research teams interviewed experienced this challenge. Remote data collection presented a viable solution. However, it also created a host of concerns and secondary challenges that project teams had not previously experienced.
The Good Business Lab (GBL) is studying the effects of a salary advance intervention for female workers. When COVID-19 cases reached peak numbers, the team’s implementation partner, Shahi Exports, restricted external access to their factories, inhibiting the research team from interviewing its subjects. Although the team considered shifting to phone surveys for this project, they were worried about the impacts on data quality. Moreover, this change would prevent the team from experiencing the research setting, removing the richness that comes from being able to observe participants in a natural context.
Teams that did shift to remote data collection reported that the shift took longer and was more difficult than anticipated. Something as simple as getting the correct person on the phone in contexts where phones may be shared presents additional challenges for researchers. Moreover, the research teams weren’t just shifting to a new mode of data collection; they were doing so with the added burden of knowing that in-person enumerator trainings could be halted at any point in time due to the ongoing uncertainties imposed by the pandemic.
Furthermore, there are additional challenges associated with remotely conducting participatory research, which is characterized by direct interaction and collaboration with participants. Jaspreet Singh of Busara explained that his team could easily conduct interviews remotely, but “With card sorting, it’s kind of troublesome. We did try to do that, we tried to do that on WhatsApp, but what we ran into were issues where you cannot share images and you cannot ask them to send a voice note because of data expenses. And that barrier does not go away even if we offer to pay them for their data charges.” Singh noted that some forms of participatory research would be best accomplished in person in the future.
Ultimately, teams worked through these varied challenges and learned new skills and processes as a result. Recognizing the tradeoffs that come from remote data collection generates lasting knowledge for teams both in challenging times and as an alternative to traditional practices. For example, the IEIC at IFMR team shared that conducting back-checks via phone proved to be a cost-effective way to validate survey responses. On the other hand, they noted that their response rates to in-person back-checks are notably higher.
Collectively, we likely have a lot to learn from how peer, research, and implementation organizations confronted data collection challenges during the pandemic’s peak and what tools and resources we should continue utilizing in the future.
Slow-downs created space for counter-assumptions
Not surprisingly, the challenges discussed above slowed data collection for our funded teams. Unexpected delays created space for teams to engage in deep reflection. What emerged was greater insight into gender dynamics that challenged previous assumptions.
Faced with delays and additional time to refine their research plan, GBL researchers conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with female factory workers. The results gave the team pause. The GBL team learned that among women in their study sample, greater financial responsibility for women in the household is not necessarily associated with greater agency. Research Associate Apoorv Somanchi explained,
“We found that women’s beliefs are often contrary to the traditional definitions of agency, and hence we had to update our own beliefs in this process. For example, during our primary research exercises, we often heard women express no desire to be involved in certain household decisions—then, asking women questions on whether they are involved in decisions or not would be a bad measure, as it would not capture their inherent desire but rather an assumption that greater involvement in financial decision-making would imply greater agency.”
Apoorv went on to explain that this research topic appears to be underexplored in the current literature, pointing to the value of these insights for this project and the field more broadly.
The Busara team had a similar experience. Busara is investigating the effects of a mental accounting intervention administered through a savings app on women living in poverty. However, the team has faced difficulty finding participants who fit the study’s requirements and are willing to participate. This is driven mostly by a lack of digital financial services (DFS) adoption among the population that was initially targeted for the study. Jaspreet explained, “Do they really trust an app to enable their savings? Do they have that mindset? And what we’ve been trying to do is find the subset of women who have either already been engaging with digital apps, or they already are from the big tech family industry – for example, amazon delivery consortiums.” Although it may seem that working women would seek support in financial management, Busara has discovered that the women in India who they work with do not typically trust the savings aspect of DFS; acceptance of credit is higher than that of savings. Women are reluctant to share their financial data, given the prevalence of scams in the country. Scammers are becoming increasingly sophisticated. By claiming to be an individual’s financial institution, they are able to convince them to reveal sensitive information. Another tactic involves preying on an individual’s emotions and demanding that money be sent to the scammer. Barriers to DFS adoption and usage need to be considered when studying the relationship between DFS and WEE.
Finally, through additional pre-testing of tools, the IEIC at IFMR team gained insight into intrahousehold norms, finding that what a woman views as the household norms may not be the same as what her husband views as the household norms. Harsh Jaiswal explained, “…sometimes they [husbands] are more liberal than the spouse will think, or the other way around. So, assuming that there are two people in the same household who are informed about each other’s norms might be a really poor assumption, is something that has been probably one of the biggest learnings for me.” Therefore, shifting norms and encouraging the adoption of digital devices is complicated by a lack of understanding of intrahousehold norms among household members.
While these insights will be further unpacked as projects progress, the Initiative sees value in these early learnings and reflections from teams.
What’s next for WEE-DiFine
At the end of each interview, we asked interviewees, “What could WEE-DiFine do to better support researchers like you?” Two of the teams noted the same idea: an opportunity to meet and discuss challenges and ideas with other WEE-DiFine-funded project teams. At the time of writing this post, we are actively working to bring our community of project teams together to discuss the challenges each team experienced and the innovations and realizations that resulted from confronting those challenges.
Jenna Grzeslo (jenna.grzeslo@bracusa.org) is Senior Program Manager, Research & Learning at BRAC USA. In this role, she supports the portfolio of projects funded by the WEE-DiFine initiative at BIGD. At the time of writing this blog post, Leena Khan was an intern at BRAC USA and is currently in her final semester of study at Georgetown University.
