Research Methodology

Invasion of P. juliflora in Shebelle riverine areas in Somalia  

Research methodology

The nature of the study will be qualitative using secondary and primary data. As Somali people are an oral society, most of the data for the study will be primary and collected using semi-structured and unstructured questionnaires. 

To administer the semi-structured interview, which is contained in Appendix I, the individuals will be randomly selected and ensure the representation of different gender, age, and occupation categories. An attempt will be made to interview as many households as possible within the limited resources of the project.

Unstructured interviews were conducted with key informants selected from government agencies, local and district government administration, NGOs, agricultural cooperatives and community based organizations to find out their respective roles in the specie’s introduction, management, control and use. These interviews are also intended to find out desired interventions and the role of respective agencies in this initiative, as well as to verify any allegations from the individual interviews within the selected communities.

Regarding the secondary data, it will be reviewed archived or unpublished project assessment reports and workshop presentations in order to establish the institutional/organizational pathways of P. juliflora’s introduction, follow up strategies, and challenges faced by relevant implementing agencies.

Finally, the data will be analyzed using simple statistical procedures and in simple quantitative analyses of the individual benefits and costs of Prosopis juliflora.

Sampling Technique

For the purpose of this study, the survey area, the Lower and Middle Shabelle regions, is divided into five major cropping areas/or divisions, three in lower Shabelle (the areas around Afgoy, Marka area and Korioley area) and two in Middle Shabelle (the areas around Johor and Bal’ad) . It is selected two villages/ or sub-divisions from each zone/division which makes the total of ten.

According to available information about p. juliflora density distribution the study area random stratification technique is used.  The stratification technique adopted by dividing the study area into two strata; high prosopis density stratum and low prosopis density stratum from each stratum random sample was selected as shown in the table below.