Researching Sensitive Topics in African Cities: Reflections on Alcohol Research in Cape Town

Mary Lawhon, Clare Herrick, Shari Daya21 June 2012

Alcohol Control, Poverty and Development

• Part of a multi-disciplinary research team• Mostly geographers • Interests in: health, transportation, urban

metabolism, culture, ethnography, policy

Alcohol research

• Largely statistical, health based or economic measures

• Policy focuses on alcohol control– Who, when, where to buy & drink

• To regulate better, we need more than stats– Why is drinking sometimes a problem?

• What kinds of research methods can show this?

Researching sensitive topics

• What is sensitive is contextual• The ‘everyday’ of many African urban

residents is filled with sensitive topics– Violence, HIV/AIDS, crime, drugs, illegal economic

activity, etc, etc• Sensitive research has particular challenges

Pragmatics and ethics

• Can’t just ask respondents directly about their drinking practices– Esp as (foreign) white, middle-class interviewers

• While many “know” about illegal activities, limited incentive (and many disincentives) to “make legible”

• Many emotive stories- impacts for respondents and researchers

We used multiple…

• Methods: interviews, participants obs, focus groups

• Respondents: residents, industry, policy-makers, NGOs

Participant observations

• Presence of researcher changing behaviours• Participating in illegal activities (drinking in

shebeens) • Safety of researchers• Hard to understand causation/correlations

and what happens outside the pub/shebeen

From focus groups… to unfocused groups

• Needed to start from the beginning: – What do residents consider to be the key

experiences associated with drinking?– Are these positive or negative?– When/why?

Challenges with focus groups

• Who should facilitate them? Participate in them?

• Residents expected us to “want” certain answers– Educated YBM speaking English– Discomfort of OBW drinkers

Interviews

• Key informants re policy, industry, NGOs, etc• Small conversations on public transport• Laura’s work adding alcohol into existing

research

Challenges of interviews

• Safety of researchers– Respondents very nervous and curious as to “agenda”

of researcher, wanted proof of UCT affiliation• What to do when interviewees repeat “received

wisdom”?– Dop system– Shebeens as site of all problems; liberation

association• What is the role of researcher in pushing beyond

these explanations?

Putting it all together?

• How to combine different method/methodologies?– Can’t really “triangulate” results as these are

about individual and community experiences; no “right” and “wrong”

• Can it be more than just description?• How to use this as foundation for policy

and/or future research?