it's good to talk to people

Tomorrow, I am leaving Timor-Leste. In addition to the elite interviews I have been conducting in Dili, I also piloted a small door-to-door survey in three districts: Dili, Bobonaro, and Baucau. I am actually quite happy we started with something at a small scale, because there are many kinks to be worked out in both survey design to implementation. In addition, each day was quite slow-going, because I did not have the resources to hire and train multiple enumerators, so it was just me and my translator going door-to-door. 

My interpreter in Maliana, Francisco, and me.

In the villages, homes can be far apart and it often took a long time at each house to introduce ourselves, make people feel comfortable, and identify an adult who is willing to participate in the survey. Most of the questions are multiple choice, but people often opted instead to provide long-winded responses. (Who can blame them? It’s hard to characterize one’s living conditions, or one’s preferences on tax policy, by selecting an item on a Likert scale.) Sometimes, people also offered us a Coke (or my interpreter offered one of the men a cigarette), and they asked questions about how long I had been in Timor and how I was finding the country. It is rude to refuse these offers or conversations, so my target of 20 minutes per household was usually too ambitious.

I only surveyed adults over the age of 25, because my questionnaire contains some items about the period of Indonesian occupation (1975-1999). While I am interested in young people’s impressions of this period based on what they may have heard from their families, I am mainly interested in people’s recollections of their own experiences.

At one house in Baucau this past Saturday, we spoke with a woman in her mid-60s who ran a small kiosk with snacks and drinks. We sat on wood planks propped up around a dirt floor, with a single, moving pile of laundry, live chickens, and a couple of small children off to one side. There were at least three other children, one of whom looked about 20 or 22 and had her own baby she was cradling during the interview. The family lived somewhere in the area, but I couldn’t really tell where they might have slept. (There was likely an attached shed behind the kiosk that was their house.)

The woman was happy to participate in the survey, but for many of the questions about how she’d like to see public revenues managed and spent, she would say “I don’t know, that is for our political leaders to decide.”

Today, a young woman from Baucau called me. I blundered my way through a five-minute phone conversation in Tetun with her, and grasped enough to learn that we had surveyed her mom on Saturday, that she wanted to speak to me about the survey, and that she was also looking for work. I worried that if she wanted a job I was not going to be able to help her, but I asked (in broken Tetun) if my interpreter could call her back. She said yes, so my interpreter returned her call a few minutes later. I found myself nervous about what she would say:  Was she upset about the survey? What if she thought I would be able to help her family in some way? I couldn’t promise to do this. I fretted a bit while I waited to hear back from my interpreter. (In the meantime, I had a nice night out with fellow "expat" friends in Dili where we ate “chicken-on-a-stick”, rice, and fish on the beach for about $2-a-head, surrounded by Timorese clients, and then drove a few minutes down the road for a $6 dessert buffet at Hotel Timor, one of the fanciest hotels in Dili, whose dining room was populated by a few groups consisting almost exclusively of foreigners. Only those with money can flow so easily across this divide.) I just got home to check my email and received my interpreter’s summary of his conversation with the young woman in Baucau. Below, I have omitted any potentially identifiable or sensitive information:

“I phoned Mrs. X today around 14:45 hrs, and heard about her concerns in relation to our survey. Mrs. X is a daughter of the woman we interviewed in a small kiosk where we bought water and cigarettes. She is a secondary school graduate, skilled in use of computer programs, hospitality management… She stated, she has been looking for a job so far, applied to several organizations … but she failed. Sustainability of the family life only depends on [sales from the] kiosk and her mother’s elderly payment [pension] by the government. Their present living conditions are neither good nor bad. Their living conditions now compared to one year ago is the same and she feels it will remain the same in a coming year. She described the overall economic situation of Timor-Leste in general is neither good nor bad…She feels that the present situation is better than the last year, but it will remain the same in a coming year. She described: it is better for our community to pay higher taxes if it means that there will be more services provided by government. She was optimistic about her future at the time of Timor-Leste restoration of independence. If a parliamentary election [were] to be held tomorrow, she will vote for X party.”

This young woman independently phoned me with her own responses to my survey. While I did not leave a copy of the survey with each household, she clearly remembered many of the questions I asked her mom, and wanted to provide her own responses. (Surveys are often not fully confidential in Timor, since other family members will often be gathered around, and respondents note that they feel comfortable this way.)

I will have my interpreter call her back and make sure she is clear about the purpose of my survey and my research (i.e. I hope my research will have long-term benefits for people like her, but unfortunately I cannot provide anything in the short-term). In the meantime, I find myself really wishing I could go back and chat with her more. Earlier, I was concerned that perhaps the population of Timor-Leste would be over-surveyed -- with donors doing impact evaluation surveys and large foundations conducting public opinion polls in such a small country, surely people were sick of talking to random strangers that wander into their neighborhood, gather information about their living standards and such, then leave, never to be seen again? In a way, it was really nice to hear from this woman, as some reassurance that perhaps some people are not being asked for their views enough...

This, and some other experiences, have made me think a lot about social science research ethics these days. I will share more once my thinking on the subject is a bit more coherent. For now, all I can say is: it's complicated, and we (or I, for one) definitely need more training on these issues.