Nutrition in Nigeria

Research tools

Literature review + interviews: Before we created our research tools, we reviewed related studies, project reports, and spoke with contacts familiar with the area. We presented this review to our client and shared the identified research gaps. This review and discussion helped us to refine our domains of inquiry and determined the tools that we would create for our fieldwork.

Local partnerships: We partnered with professors and project leaders familiar with our research area. These partnerships were integral to the success of our research. Our partnerships were established in advance of our fieldwork, and every single question in our research tools was reviewed by these partners as well as our local research assistants familiar with the communities that we would visit. The experiences of our partners also determined the communities in which we conducted research. We selected communities whose livelihoods revolved around the production of our target commodities as these individuals are experts in the barriers and enablers to producing and selling these products.

Community transect walks: Community transect walks provided insight into each community and allowed us to compare factors across the 6 communities that we visited. Seemingly simple factors such as road conditions can impact who can travel to local markets and what’s available to purchase if consumers can get there. We captured details like this through our community transect walk.

Focus group discussions + seasonal calendars: Our focus group discussions uncovered gender dynamics in agricultural production activities and food availability throughout the year. Gender dynamics captured participants’ perceptions of tasks related to crop production, processing, storage, sale, and food preparation. The moderators of the discussion used a seasonal calendar to capture the availability and affordability of 12 specific food groups for each month of the year. This calendar provided key insights into the trade-offs that families make each month.

Surveys + structured observations: We triangulated our focus group discussion topics through our household surveys and observations. These surveys were conducted separately with male and female household heads. Questions in the household survey covered agriculture production practices, land holding, meal preparation practices, as well as water, hygiene, and sanitation questions. Together, our household surveys provided in-depth insights into the everyday lives of families in our research area.

Interviews with agricultural workers: In what’s seen as an innovative addition to a nutrition assessment, we interviewed farmers, aggregators, and retailers to further understand activities along target value chains. These interviews revealed opportunities and bottlenecks associated with each value chain. We relied on our community contact to initially connect us to our informants, and as we learned more about the value chain in each area some of our interviews resulted from snowball sampling. Conducting research in small communities lends itself to tracing a chain of actors, and this study was no different.

Interviews with local leaders: In each community, we also spoke with local leaders working in agriculture, health, and nutrition. These conversations provided us with insights into systems scaling from the local to national level.

Seasonal price variation greatly impacts retailers’ profits.

Household diets could be improved through eating more of what the household produces.

Surprise: Interviewing market retailers was new for the research team. I coached team members on areas of questioning with market retailers, which ultimately elicited insights that steered program design.

What happened after? After the fieldwork, we returned to Washington, DC, composed a report, and shared our learnings with our client. The client used this report to invest in agriculture, health, market development, and nutrition activities for the upcoming program funding cycle.

Reflections

The phrasing of a question matters. We were creative in phrasing questions related to hygiene and sanitation practices, which in previous research efforts were phrased in a leading manner.