UBU Integral Development Studies
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A Community Indicator Tool Box for Assessing Basic Development Factors: Comparison and Contrast Between Asia and Africa
Preface
Doing a PhD in the Integral Development Studies Program has allowed me to do things that would be largely unthinkable in almost any other program. To get to the point I am at today, I have had to read across the full range of economics from Aristotle and Adam Smith to Schumacher, Easterly, Sen and Puntasen. I have gotten to look at the complexity of development metrics, objective and subjective. I delved into the history, politics, and social and cultural development of three culturally complex countries. I have gotten the opportunity to study Buddhism, re-study Christianity and be spiritually inspired by both. I have gotten to investigate how children think, function and develop. I have read about community development and how it can support both economic development as well as personal development. I have gotten to meet and have conversations with African, Thai, Hungarian, American, Malaysian, British, Australian and Canadian economists and American, Ugandan and Thai educators who are teaching from kindergarten through University;. I have already gotten to build a collaborative network that covers 5 continents, and more than 8 nations. I have even gotten the opportunity to use my previous academic training in Chemistry as we made soap and soy products. As this adventure continues it will include studying in an academic community and an intentional Buddhist community and working in two countries with children who, while from vastly different backgrounds, share some of the same traumas. It will involve helping Thai undergraduates to better understand participatory action research in participatory development and helping children learn to help themselves and each other. I will get to build houses, farm, make food, teach, listen and talk, hopefully in two languages.
There is no way that I can include, measure or even report on all that I will be doing. Here I will focus on one very tiny part of all of this work. This will be called my research proposal: an attempt to provide these communities with a set of indicators that will help them measure their development progress on their own terms with tools that will help them refine their development processes.
Chapter 1: Introduction
- Background of the Problem
Today in Africa, the development problems facing most of the communities and nations are worse than they were sixty years ago at the advent of international development programs; this in spite of the infusion of more than $2 trillion in international aid in the course of the last 50 years. With the frequent violence of war and genocide and the devastation of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Sub-Saharan Africa has been left with a population whose average age is lower today than it was three decades ago [1] and whose family structure has been forcibly broken down leaving many families headed by children.
One development approach that is being favorably received at least in theoretical terms, so far, after a presentation at the Omidyar.net Members' Conference in Gulu, Uganda in February of 2007, is the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy of development introduced by His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, King of Thailand. This approach proposes to build development skills using a grassroots approach. The King's Philosophy proposes that the development process progresses starting with an "explosion from within."
In a very typically Buddhist cyclic fashion, the individual develops knowledge and wisdom. The knowledge, over the course of the explosion, will include the development of understanding how to wisely incorporate technology. It includes a development of increasingly stronger ethical knowledge. This ethical knowledge includes a personal aspect where each individual comes to know a more real and sustainable role for material wealth. There is a community component, as well, that values the support of others to insure their safety and decrease their suffering. Using local wisdom and individual and community morality as guides, this method proposes to develop moderation, reasonableness and a self-immunity system to initially provide people with basic needs and protection against outside shocks.
- Statement of the Problem
Because this process depends significantly on agricultural self-production to provide for basic sustenance needs, current development indicators are inadequate in measuring development success in sufficiency development models. Currently, purported "development" indicators either significantly depend on a measurement of per capita GNP or they are based on subjective evaluations of happiness. Because of the age, education and traumatic lives of the children involve in the Community at Opok Farms in Uganda, there is concern that subjective evaluation tools might not accurately reflect the conditions in the community.
Although community indicators have gained wide-spread acceptance in evaluating the progress of community development in the West and particularly in the United States, no one has looked at the possibility of using similar tools to evaluate basic community development in developing nations. There seems to exist in developing nations a patronizing belief that the most underdeveloped people do not have the knowledge or capabilities to define, assess and implement plans for their own development needs. Because of its magnitude, this topic warrants its own study.
- Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is to develop a toolbox of community development indicators that can be used by a community based on its self-defined development goals. It should address all areas of community and personal development and provide a diversity of styles of measurement including quantitative and qualitative measurements. It should provide subjective measures and alternative proxie measurements for any and perhaps all items.
- Research Questions
Particular issues to be considered include:
- Can a toolbox of metric tools be assembled that can be used by a community with little intervention from the outside?
- Can the information being gathered be focused enough to provide growth and development information for the community on the areas that indicate strengths and weaknesses.
- Importance of the Study
An unknown but large number of adults and children are dying of malnutrition and disease in Africa every year and with increased disparity in income and resources in the developing world, it is time to look at alternate development concepts. It is important to give the people in these communities control of their destinies rather than continuing to build dependency. The ability to have a program that guides communities in defining their own short and long-term development goals has the possibility of allowing them to take control of their own lives, development and growth. Tools that can help them identify which programs are successful and which need attention can allow them to fine-tune their programs.
- Scope of the Study
The scope of this study will be limited to 2 communities.
- The first community will be a developing community of Burmese migrants in Tak Province in Thailand. This community will act as a pilot study in all aspects of the work. This community is a group of children whose parents are Karenese migrants. They live in the countryside far outside the village and their children have a history of walking into Baan Mae U-Su to attend school at the Mae U-Su school. While they were attending school, the boys were housed at Wat U-Su by the abbot, Luang Por Thammasak.
In 2002 Vachara Sapsuwan, MD of the Free Trade Business Institute [2] heard of the situation through some Taiwanese friends. At that time there were about 20 Karenese children being cared for at the Wat, all of them malnourished. He worked with his friends, some Taiwanese business men, and the Tzu Chi Foundation to gather funds to build them a better residence. Since that time they have gone on assistance missions to the area once or twice a year sometimes going deep into the forest to minister to the families. They have built a dormitory for the children and provided housing for the girls as well. They provide a cook and simple but nutritious meals. They have been working to teach them how to grow their own food using a sufficiency economy model. They are working toward helping them have a learn-by-doing school.
There are currently about 200 children being served. All of them are undernourished though the ones who are living at the temple are in better conditions than those who still live in the village.
- The research team of five persons will spend part of March, April and May in Mae U- Su near Tha Song Yang in Tak Province in the western central region of Thailand.
- Head researcher: Linda Nowakowski
- Undergraduate assistants:
- Phattharavadee Chanbanditnant, second year BBA student at Ubon Ratchathani University
- Ekkaluk Nopparut, first year BBA student at Ubon Ratchathani University, graduate of Sammasikkha Sisa Asoke School School and member of Sisa Asoke community for more than 6 years
- Grittaya Monsin, first year BBA student at Ubon Ratchathani University
- Sakuntham Ouamcharoon, first year BBA student at Ubon Ratchathani University, graduate of Sammasikkha Sisa Asoke School School and member of Sisa Asoke community for more than 6 years
- While working with and living in the community, the research team will lead focus groups and administer surveys to help guide the community toward the comprehensive development of their short and long term goals.
- Once the goals are established, the research team will assist the community in selecting the indicators that will be used to evaluate the community on all of its goals.
- The research team will then edit and organize the indicators into a comprehensive evaluation set.
- The evaluation will be administered. This initial evaluation will provide a bench mark for the community.
- During the stay with the community, the research team will be responsible for teaching the children and participating adults, about the functioning of a sufficiency economy model of development.
- They will be modeling the traits required.
- They will work with the community on developing "deep community."
- At the end of one year, the research term will return to the community to administer the evaluation a second time. From the results of this survey, the community will be able to see how they have progressed through the year toward attaining their goals. They will be able to see where they have problems and what their strengths are. This will guide them in their further development.
- The second community will be Opok Farms Village, a newly forming resettlement community of child-headed households in the Amaru District in northern Uganda. The same procedure described above will be followed by the research team during the period of March, April and May of 2009. The second administration will be one year later in 2010.
Definition of Terms
- Deep Community:
Deep community is a term that I was first introduced to at a presentation by Peter Hurst, PhD at Mahidol University, Salaya Campus In May of 2007. Dr. Hurst had just spent six months assisting Mahidol to establish a program in Contemplative Education. One of the concepts he introduced is the concept of deep community.
His description was in terms of a Contemplative Education model used at Naropa University. The students are enrolled in classes as every student in every university in the world is but there is an intentional attempt to build a community within that group that will support the community and the individual on two levels: group/class tasks and individual personal growth.
Judith Thompson explained: “True community is based on spiritual awareness which is the foundation of deep community. Deep community is acquired through sharing of pain and traumatic experiences, listening, releasing one's feelings and placing them in the hands of the community. Deep community is a process and a product, a deeper recognition of connection, and a method for self-help.”
Both of the communities we will be looking at have children separated from their parents, either short- term or long-term. Both are faced with some degree of alienation from their society at large. Both communities are children at risk in terms of health and nutrition, lack of education and emotional, spiritual, ethical development due to extreme poverty and separation from their parents. The quality of the support that the children can offer each other is paramount to their development as whole, functioning adults.
- Indicators:
When we look at social life and hence social development, we use three distinct lenses: economic, political and cultural. It is my belief that development has been measured in the past with a single lens that has been designed and fine tuned to perfectly see neoclassical economic development and in particular consumerism, as the perfect vision. The initiation of the term Gross National Happiness came as a result of a disagreement on whether GDP was an accurate or satisfactory measure of development. Rather than directly confront the definition of development, a decision was made to change the lens that we look at “development” through rather than address what it means to be a developed society. The adoption of the term happiness was unfortunate and has not addressed the problem of developing a suitable indicator or index to compare relative development in the global community while at the same time using a soft, undefined term measured by often questioned, subjective tools. By looking at a definition of human well being which includes a happiness factor, an index could be developed to allow communities to evaluate their own well-being based on their own criteria and over time, their development with tools that could also help them fine tune programs within their communities.
- Tool Kit:
It became apparent that we had some serious progress evaluation problems when it was determined that these communities would be developed using the King’s Sufficiency Economy philosophy as a model for economic development. First, since the this economic model is based on the development of core sphere processes, there is no “economic” measure
We are looking to develop list of indicators or factors that need to be considered in developing an index for any specific set of people as well as potential proxy indicators. This would assist community leaders or researchers in setting up evaluation tools that will assist communities in assessing their development and fine-tuning programs. Please note here that I am not concerned with providing tools that will allow for the comparison of varied communities or in providing information for government leaders to set policy over broad ranges of communities.
Delimitations and Limitations
Chapter 2: Review of the Literature
Sociology - History
- Socio-Political History
- Myanmar - Thailand
- General
- Karen Tribe
- Tak
- Current situation
- Africa
- General
- Uganda
- Acholi
- Current situation
- Culture
- Myanmar-Karenese
- Uganda
- Religion
- Buddhism
- Christianity
Economics
- General
Well-being has been derived from two general perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; and the eudaimonic approach, which focuses on meaning and self-realization and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning. The most commonly held meaning today seems to be the hedonic approach, at least in western terms. Buddhist Economics would hold that the eudaimonic approach is the proper one. The western hedonic use of the term is particularly suited for use in neoclassical economics as it opens the door for the definition of an economic system with never ending growth and greed, because human well-being has an upper limit and satisfaction does not. It makes way for the possibility of using consumption as a measure for well-being.
Perhaps the earliest mention of economics and well-being was made by Aristotle in The Topics. [Aristotle] The term economics derives from the Greek words οίκω [okos], 'house', and νέμω [nemo], 'rules' hence household management. In the Topics, Aristotle provides his philosophical analysis of human ends and means. He explains that means or instruments of production are valuable because their end products are useful to people. The more useful or desirable a good is, the higher the value of the means of production is. Aristotle then goes on to derive a number of economic ideas from axiomatic concepts including the necessity of human action, the pursuit of ends by ordering and allocating scarce means, and the reality of human inequality and diversity.
For Aristotle, the individual human action of using wealth is what constitutes the economic dimension. The purpose of economic action is to use things that are necessary for life (i.e., survival) and for the Good Life (i.e., flourishing). The Good Life is the moral life of virtue through which human beings attain happiness.
Aristotle realized that wanting too much is a human failing. He placed a great deal of blame on money because it had no natural terminus. Aristotle taught that when a man pursues wealth in the form of exchange value, he undermines the proper and moral use of his human capacities.
How then does contemporary, neoclassical economics get from “survival” and “a good life”” to unbounded, never ending growth in consumerism?
Economics is a member of that strange academic division called “social sciences.” Economics has always pretended to the throne of the Social Sciences. By making an assumption here and a generalization there, economics has become a measurable science of precision and prediction. Never mind that the precision is a ruse and the predictions are often wrong. Sadly, all of this “scientific nature” has come at the cost of its description as a social study; a study involved with the wants, desires and decisions of people. This is not to say that there are not influential economists that seriously deal with the social side of Economics, rather it is to say that respect in the field goes to mathematicians and scientists. [3]
In the early 1970’s, international society, spearheaded by His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand and Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the King of Bhutan, declared unequivocally that human well-being, happiness and development can not be measured by the financial output of a nation. [Adulyadej, 2003] [Tsedruk]
At about this same time, Richard Easterlin’s watershed research at the University of Southern California showed that the average levels of happiness reported by Americans had not increased over decade even though their average incomes had increased by 100%. [Easterlin 1974]
Amataya Sen, and others have also agreed that GDP is an inadequate measure for the purpose of measuring international development. [Sen, 1984] The development of the Human Development Index in 1990 was a big step forward. The index includes GDP but also looks at literacy measurements as well as life expectancy as a measure of health issues. The UN has adopted this index for their annual UNDP reports.
Many other new indicators have been developed over the years: The Satisfaction with Life Scale [Diener], Happy Life years [Veenhoven], and The Happy Planet Index [The New Economics Foundation]. Each suffers in its own selection of indicators and how it is measured. There has also been substantial criticism of Happiness Science as not even having a definition of happiness to work with let alone the criticisms of the sampling techniques.
Happiness is a very soft and fluffy word. What a person means by happiness today may not mean what they mean by happiness tomorrow and it has no known relationship to what someone else means by happiness on any given day. What Thai’s view as happiness is not the same as what Americans mean by happiness. Happiness seems to have cultural, linguistic and historical factors. [Wierzbicka] [Diener and Oishi] [Clark] The Gross National Happiness index arose because of a disagreement over the interpretation of development indices. And yet, Gross National Happiness does not seem to be attempting to measure development or even trying to define it.
If the indices that are developed to replace GDP for either development or happiness are culturally based, it seems clear that the indices cannot be used for international comparisons and scales. I see no real problem with this if the intent is to evaluate local progress and provide direction for future development work.
Besides the complaint of the weak definition of happiness, there have also been criticisms of the sampling methods [Easterlin 2004] [Frank], the handling and analysis of the data [Wierzbicka] and the validity of the policy implications of the resulting data [Wilkinson]. There seems to be much less resistance to the use of happiness indicators in smaller samples of population, especially when the sampling subjects remain the same over a period of time. [Schimmack] Subjective measurements pose potential linguistics problems and depending on the group being measured, pose a problem of linguistic, intellectual and emotional maturity.
None of the criticisms mentioned however address the problems inherent with using GDP as the primary indicator for development. GDP ignores the contribution of large swathes of a community; it ignores self production, unpaid household production, both of which reflect narrow-minded, cultural assumptions that indicate that consumerism is more valuable than sufficiency and sustainability and that there is little value in maintaining a strong unitary family. The fact that GDP also counts negatives (such as environmental clean-up, medical care for diseases caused by over consumption and unhealthy life styles) as positives makes the true value of it as a tool for measuring well-being dubious.
- Asia
- Thailand
In 1974, at about the same time as the King of Bhutan proposed the concept of Gross National Happiness, The King of Thailand proposed a new model for development. This model was based on his Sufficiency Economy Philosophy and is part of the work for which he was recently granted the United Nations’ first Lifetime Development Award.
The King has suggested, based on his observations over many years that development needs to be deliberate grassroots development. He has described this as an “explosion from within.” It is a type of development that starts with the development of the individual and progresses through the family, the community, the region and the nation. Another way to describe this is in the analogy of raising a child into a strong adult. A child needs to be prepared with the knowledge and wisdom to deal with the world. We give them knowledge of language and communication. As parents we attempt to teach them good morals in order to give them a foundation on which they can build. We provide them with educational opportunities and watch over them. As they mature, they are able to step out of their homes and interact with society in good and productive ways. In the King’s words:
“…Development of the nation must be carried out in stages, starting with the laying of the foundation by ensuring the majority of the people have their basic necessities through the use of economical means and equipment in accordance with theoretical principles. Once a reasonably firm foundation has been laid and in effect, higher levels of economic growth and development should be promoted…” [Adulyadej unknown date]Some people have viewed this concept as being old-fashioned. The King anticipated this. In his Birthday speech on December 4, 1974 His Majesty the King added that it is not important whether Thailand would be accused of being old-fashioned; what is important is the fact that the people have enough to live and to eat.
“…no matter what others say – whether they will accuse Thailand of being old-fashioned or obscurantist. So long as we have enough to live on and to live for – and this should be the wish and determination of all of us – without aiming for the apex of prosperity, we shall already be considered as the top in comparison with other countries in the present world…” [Adulyadej 1974]Sufficiency entails three components:
- moderation
- reasonableness
- a self-immunity system, i.e. being able to cope with shocks from internal and external changes.
Two underlying conditions are necessary to achieve this sufficiency:
- knowledge (breadth and thoroughness in planning, and carefulness in applying knowledge and in the implementation of those plans are required)
- morality (people are to possess honesty and integrity, while conducting their lives with perseverance, harmlessness and generosity)
At the most basic level, the family, this philosophy encourages developing in a safe and cautious manner and building a life of relative self-sufficiency. This life style, though safe and providing the family and the region with the most basic of needs, is based on self production and contributes nothing to the GDP and hence demonstrates no economic development. It seems clear that the questions being asked by a development index that is using GDP as its primary indicator is NOT whether the society is better off but rather whether it has bought into the western definition of economic development. This flies in the face of Buddhist cultures where the ultimate development is the development of personal and community wisdom.
Neither GNH nor GDP nor HDI address how to evaluate how to measure development in a community based on the Sufficiency Economy Philosopy.
- Karen Hill Tribes
The FTBI Foundation has been working with the Karen children teaching them how to do organic farming in order to provide themselves with food while they are at school and perhaps enough to sell for additional support money to make themselves financially independent form the charity.
- Africa
- Uganda
- Acholi
- Theory
- Definitions of well being
- Aristotle
- Bentham
- Maslow
- Max-Neef
- United Nations
- Millennium Development Goals
- Development
- Traditional
- Sufficiency Economy
- Objective vs. Subjective
- Measurement
- GDP
- GNP
- HDI
- GNH
Community / Personal Development
- Definitions
- Community Development
- Personal Development
- Deep Community
- Processes
- Goal setting
- Support and monitoring
Indicators
- Use
Community indicators have been used to help improve health and social conditions since they were first used in Belgium, France, England and the USA in the 1830’s. In 1869 the US Bureau of Statistics was created and in 1884 The US Bureau of Labor was formed. Labor statistics were among the first social statistics to be gathered and used on an official basis. In 1929 President Hoover established the Research Committee on Social Trends and Wesley Clare Mitchell, an economist with the US government, commissioned the report Recent Social Trends. Interest in social indicators waned after the Great Depression and the 2nd World war in favor of economic indicators like GDP.
In the 1960’s critics of GDP charged that economic indicators were being given undue priority. The indicators movement was formed to attempt to rationalize social policy as economic indicators had rationalized economic indicators. This led to the US Full Opportunity and Social Accounting Act of 1967.
In 1968 The Russell Sage Foundation issued a report entitled Indicators of Social Change which opposed the premature use of Social indicators to determine social policy and argued for more basic research and better data. The following year the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare released the report Toward a Social Report, which encouraged the use of social indicators to indicate direction of progress and to assist in the setting of policy and the evaluation of the effectiveness of social programs. The Russell Sage Foundation published The Human Meaning of Social Indicators in 1972 as a companion to Toward a Social Report, and was mainly concerned with psychological data (attitudes, expectations, aspirations, values)
In 1973 the first conference on social indicators was hosted by The Russell Sage Foundation and the papers presented there were published in 1975. In 1974 the Journal Social Indicators Research founded and the US Office of Management and Budget published the first of three volumes of Social Indicators. Many hoped this would be the beginning of institutionalized national reporting, but federal efforts to produce indicator reports ended after the third volume in 1981 largely because the descriptive statistics were seen as weak in explaining social phenomena.
Interest in and priority of social indicators again waned during the 1980’s, primarily due to conflict within the movement over immediate goals of the movement and also because data collection and management systems were too limited.
In response to political changes in the 1980’s that shifted control of social programs from the national and state levels to local entities, more localize social indicator projects began in order to help provide the local governments with relevant data to guide policy decisions and program development.
In 1992 the United Nations Rio Summit introduced a framework for developing ‘indicators of sustainability’ and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) initiated a program conducting nation-wide environmental performance reviews to help nations improve their environmental performance.
In 1995 OECD held an International Conference on Indicators for Urban Policies.
The President’s Council on Sustainable Development recommended in 1996 that the federal government collaborate with the private sector and NGOs to develop national indicators of progress towards sustainable development.
The last two decades have seen definitive growth in the development and use of community level social indicators. This has been supported by such eminent economists as Hazel Henderson based on an understanding that development must necessarily build from the grassroots to provide strong support for the upper levels.
In looking at the development of new communities, it seems important to consider points related to the formation and understanding of the selection of the community members: How are they selected? What is the purpose and function of the community? How does the community relate to broader society? What are the community's self-defined community goals?
There is also a question of individual development that must be considered as individuals and communities do not develop independently. Do individuals in the community have similar personal development goals?
- Development
In looking to build that list, we can look to the different viewpoints of the two leaders in defining human needs in the last 60 years, Abraham Maslow and Manfred Max-Neef. Abraham Maslow posited the Maslow Heirarchy of Human Needs. Maslow’s work is even to this day most interesting because he used well subjects rather than developmentally impaired subjects to build his argument. Maslow used some of the greatest achievers in 20th century history to define the development of self-actualization. That is to say that he looked at how these special people incrementally developed over their lifetimes and determined that in order to develop to that apex of development that he described as “self-actualized”, there was a hierarchy of needs where it was necessary for the lower level needs to be met before going on to meet the next level of needs. This is not to say that a person can not work on meeting higher level needs before they work on upper level needs but rather that in order to become a self actualized individual, something that he pointed out was very rare, the needs necessarily had to be developed hierarchically.
This hierarchy can be seen in the diagram below. [Finkelstein]
.
Buddhist Economics has been referred to as where Economics meets ethics. This can perhaps be seen clearest when looking at the goal of Economics.
Neoclassical economics claims that the goal of the economic production process is the maximization of utility. What is utility? Utility is simply the term that has been used to replace Aristotle’s human well-being. It is often referred to as a measure of satisfaction. Satisfaction and well-being seem quite different. One can imagine a person being well but not being satisfied. It is hard to imagine a person who is not well being satisfied.
The second description of basic human needs is provided by Manfred Max-Neef. Max-Neef described the basic needs of individuals as universal and non-hierarchical. It can best be described in the following table: [Max-Neef]
| Being | Having | Doing | Interaction | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subsistence | Physical and mental health | Food, shelter, work | Feed, clothe, rest, work | Living environment, social setting |
| Protection' | Care, adaptability, autonomy | Social security, health systems, work | Co-operate, plan, take care of, help | Social environment, dwelling |
| Affection | Respect, sense of humor, generosity, sensuality | Friendships, family, relationships with nature | Share, take care of, make love, express emotions | Privacy, intimate spaces of togetherness |
| Understanding | Critical capacity, curiosity, intuition, communities | Literature, teachers, educational policies | Analyze, study, mediate, investigate | Schools, families, universities |
| Participation | Receptiveness, dedication, sense of humor | Responsibilities, duties, work, rights | Cooperate, dissent, express opinions | Associations, parties, churches, neighborhoods |
| Leisure | Imagination, tranquility, spontaneity | Games, parties, peace of mind | Day-dream, remember, relax, have fun | Landscapes, intimate spaces, places to be alone |
| Creation | Imagination, boldness, inventiveness, curiosity | Abilities, skills, work, techniques | Invent, build, design, work, compose, interpret | Spaces for expression, workshops, audiences |
| Identity | Sense of belonging, self-esteem, consistency | Language, religions, work, customs, values, norms | Get to know oneself, grow, commit oneself | Places one belongs to, everyday settings |
| Freedom | Autonomy, passion, self-esteem, open-mindedness | Equal rights | Dissent, choose, run risks, develop awareness | Anywhere |
The third set of criteria that I would like to look at is a list of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Improve maternal health
- Achieve universal primary education
- Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
- Promote gender equality and empower women
- Ensure environmental sustainability
- Reduce child mortality
- Develop a global partnership for development
Many people disagree with Maslow’s interpretation of well-being. Many other people disagree with Max-Neef’s description. The Millennium Development Goals are too general and inadequate to act as a measure of total well-being but certainly provide direction on issues that should be addressed by developing societies. The theory behind the development of these scales is not particularly interesting in this study. We are more concerned with identifying an inclusive set of factors that should be considered in evaluating well-being. Therefore, we would like to look at the factors in each of these lists to see if they can lead to a single list of factors that require consideration in any measure of wellness and in particular, my specific case of deprived children. By dividing well-being into the following categories and looking at a broader measure of well-being than individuals we can make the following list.
- Physical health – individual and family
- Mental / psychological health – individual, family and community
- Mental / intellectual health – individual, family and community
- Political health – community and nation
- Social health – family and community
- Spiritual health – individual, family and community
- Financial health – individual, family and community
One major difference between this list and other indices of development or well-being is that it looks at the well being on a broader scale than simply per capita GDP. It considers all facets of personal and community development. It considers the effects of programs on over-all well-being of individuals, families and communities. If every person is maximizing their monetary income (GDP) to the neglect of the balanced development of individuals, families and communities, they are creating an unhealthy – not well – situation.
The proposed list might consist of the following areas:
Physical health – individual
Adequate diet (MDG)
Access to health care
Healthy life style
Shelter
Clothing
Mental / psychological health – individual, family and community
Individual – happiness, perceived ability to make choices, decisions and contributions
Family – stability and family support for individuals
Community – open communications in the community
Mental / intellectual health – individual, family and community
Individual – educational opportunities and educational detractors
Family – family support for educational requirements providing study time and conditions)
Community – community support for education (schools, libraries, museums)
Political health – community and nation
Community – potential and actualization of individual participation
National - potential and actualization of individual participation
Social health – individual, family and community
Individual – quantity and quality of personal friendships
Family – family participation and support of extended family or community activities
Community – sense of community identity
Spiritual health – individual, family and community
Individual – potential and actual participation in activities for individual spiritual growth
Family – support and assistance to individual spiritual growth
Community – support and assistance to individual spiritual growth
Financial health – individual, family and community
Individual – income, debt and savings; access to transportation (public and private)
Family – income, debt and savings
Community – income, debt and savings
Environmental Health
Individual, family and community support of sustainable life stylesIn developing a tool box of evaluation questions and measurements of proxy indicators, we want to provide a community with tools that they can pick and choose from to measure the things that they believe are most important in their own development. They can define the community that they are working toward and build their own evaluation tool. This will provide a personalized tool that can be used to not only evaluate their progress but provide them with information that can be used in the future to fine tune and focus their future development efforts.
In this presentation, I do not wish to present a detailed list of all possibilities but rather would like to look at the development of a list for a single area, that of individual health care. This should be able to demonstrate the direction we need to go with developing a tool that is generally usable. We might start by considering some of the proxies listed below to provide more quantitative figures than subjective values.
Physical health – individual:
Adequate diet
Calories
Under-development
Height
Weight
Access to health care
Contraceptive use
Infant mortality rate
Low birth rate
Children born with attending health care professional
Availability of oral rehydration therapy (ORT)
Immunizations – measles, tuberculosis
Incidence of tuberculosis
Number of children under 5 with fever receiving anti malarial drugs
Days absent from school or work due to illness.
Healthy life style
Insecticide treated bed nets
Sustainable access to clean water
Sustainable access to sanitary
CO2 emissions per capita
Prevalence of smoking
Prevalence of drinking
Other
Life expectancy
Population growth rate
Shelter – living in permanent shelter
Clothing – changes of clothes and appropriateness
This list is not complete and needs to be expanded with the cooperation and participation of the community being evaluated. This community participation will be even more important in areas that are less black and white than physical health such as social and spiritual health. Other areas might be more amenable to subjective kinds of evaluations.
With this list, as I look at the particular community I will be working with, some of the indicators immediately fall out as inappropriate. This community is not sexually active, at least at this point, so things such as the use of condoms, contraceptive use, infant mortality rate, low birth rate, and children born with attending health care professional do not give us meaningful information. However, with an inclusive list, choosing the factors measured becomes a task of looking at the community and selecting the factors that they feel are appropriate rather than developing a tool from scratch. The inclusive list will prompt members of the community on things to look for as the community develops and changes. A specific community might see tuberculosis on the list and decide that that is not an issue for them but that they need some way to assess HIV/AIDS diagnosis and treatment in their community.
Using a set of tools like this will evaluate the entire development of a community rather than focusing or really even necessarily considering GDP. A Sufficiency based community does not generate significant income. It can however generate physical, mental, social, spiritual, political, and environmental health. It can generate human development and well-being. Looking at individual communities is necessary due to the unique nature of each community. How do you evaluate subjective answers to “Is your life happier this year than last?” when you are surveying young children with little to no education? How does that help the community enhance or modify programs to improve development?
- Factors
Chapter 3: Research Methods
- The Qualitative Paradigm
Qualitative methods have their origins in the humanities: sociology, anthropology, geography and history. They differ from quantitative methods in aiming, not primarily at precise measurement of pre-determined hypotheses, but holistic understanding of complex realities and processes where even the questions and hypotheses emerge cumulatively as the investigation progresses. Questions are broad and open-ended and change and develop over time to fill in a 'jigsaw' of differing accounts of 'reality', unraveling which may be said to be generally 'true' and which are specific and subjective and why.
Different sampling methods are combined: different purposive sampling techniques, identification of key informants and also 'random encounters'. Typically requires long-term immersion of a skilled researcher in the field who engages in a reflexive process of data collection and analysis. This research will use the author and four undergraduates who have been introduced to the concepts of participatory action research and community building. The undergraduates will be encouraged and supported to identify their own research questions.
Participatory methods have their origins in development activism: NGOs and social movements. Here the main aim is not so much knowledge per se, but social change and empowerment - and this wherever possible as a direct result of the research process itself. In particular it seeks to investigate and give voice to those groups in society who are most vulnerable and marginalized in development decision-making and implementation.
The participatory process may involve small focus groups, min-mapping, soft systems methodology, larger participatory workshops or individual diaries and diagrams which are then collated into a plenary discussion. Participation (and hence sampling) may be open or carefully targeted to particular social groups. Larger meetings may be subdivided into what are assumed to be more 'homogeneous groups' or groups with complementary information. The research will involve active participation and action based research.
Participatory research typically uses and adapts diagram tools from farmer-led research, systems analysis and also oral and visual tools from anthropology, though many commonly used tools have also been developed by NGOs and participants in the field. Use of oral presentations and diagram tools makes both discussion and analysis accessible to non-literate participants and across language groups. Through sharing their different sources of information participants themselves may increase their understanding of development issues and the problems they face and develop solutions, as well as giving more reliable and representative information to researchers. In some cases local people themselves conduct research following initial design of specific tools and training. Some recent NGO innovations propose doing this on a large scale.
- Qualitative Methods
- Photography and videography
- Individual interviews
- Focus groups
- Audio recording
- Surveys
- Community meetings
- Journals
- The Researcher's Role
The researcher will act in a number of roles.
- Information gatherer: The research team will work to seek any information that is required by the community for decision making. Prior to working with the communities, the primary researcher will thoroughly investigate evaluation instruments that have been used in primary development and more advanced community development in an attempt to anticipate the initial primary needs of the community in defining goals and providing starting metric tools to measure the current state of development and also provide progress reports in the future.
- Editor: The primary researcher will act as the editor to develop the metrics that are originated in the community itself.
- Teacher: The research team will act as teachers to demonstrate techniques and methods of approaching problems. The final choice of tools will reside in the community.
- Historiographer: The research team will act together to document the process of community development and growth and the development of the goals and tools to measure progress.
- Data Sources
Community development models are being developed using concepts from Asoke communities (Sisa Asoke, Ratchathani Asoke and Suksa Asoke.)
- Data Collection
- Data Analysis
- Verification
- Ethical Considerations
Some issues will hold in dealing with both communities.
- Some issues that will be dealt with in conversations about personal and community needs are likely to be of private and personal nature. Strict adherence to privacy issues will be necessary.
The first community that will be worked with will be a Buddhist community in Thailand. The majority of the research team will share a basic ethos with the community.
- Attention will need to be paid to specific differences that might arise such as vegetarianism.
- Attention will need to be paid to acting as ethical role models mirroring, respect, openness, honesty in word and act.
The second community will be a Christian community. The culture and spiritual precepts will be different but we are convinced that strong similarities will be found to extend the external validity of this research.
- It will be important for the research team to be sensitive to differences in culture and adapt their behavior to accommodate that within the rules of their own culture.
- It will be important to think through appropriate parallel images and stories for communicating the same information in the two cultures.
- Plan for Narrative OR Pilot Study Results
Chapter 5: Conclusions, Discussion, and Suggestions for Future Research
- Summary
- Conclusions
- Discussion
- Suggestions for Future Research
| [1] | : Kevin Watkins, Director and lead author. 2005. Human Development report 2005: International cooperation at a crossroads: Aid, trade and security in an unequal world, UNDP page 265 |
| [2] | : The FTBI provides motivational training for people in network marketing. Dr. Sapsuwan has formed the FTBI Foundation that uses the funds generated by the training events and accepts donations toward the assistance in tis project. Support is growing for the project with the Government Pharmaceutical Organization providing some medicines and additional support from Dr. Sapsuwan's brother and a Rotary group in California, USA also providing some funding. |
| [3] | : In the 39 years of awarding Nobel Prizes in Economics, only two awards have been made for non-mathematical / scientific contributions and there would be some who would argue that those (Sen [1998] and Schultz and Lewis [1979]) were also scientific. |
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Page name: Formal Research Proposal
Last editor: Linda Nowakowski (189)
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 03:08:29 PST
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