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Procedures
The anthropologists lived in seven villages near Santa Cruz and conducted participant-
observation research for seven months. Each anthropologist lived with a host family
and helped with planting and harvesting crops, attended town and school meetings,
mothers clubs, and agricultural co-ops. Each village had a local health promoter who
made weekly rounds to survey the presence of diarrhea in households. The
anthropologists accompanied them on these visits meet people in the community and
observe health behaviors.
When the anthropologists first entered the communities they conducted a census
followed by a needs assessment survey. In each village 10 men and 10 women were
asked to list five general needs of their community, five health needs, and the most
common diseases found in their community. They conducted community outline interviews within the villages and included neighboring communities to determine whether the host community was typical for the area.
The researchers took economic inventories of a variety of households in each community and ranked the wealth of the household based on the presence of material items such as televisions and motorcycles. They conducted unstructured interviews with laborers, landowners, and renters to gather information on the economic structure of the communities including income levels, economic stratification, and cycles in seasonal migration. At least three informants were used from each category per community to allow the anthropologists to cross-reference the responses.
The anthropologists were interested in the use of traditional remedies as compared to Western medicine in the host communities. Because women are the family members who treat disease, a disease questionnaire was administered to 68 female heads of household in four villages in which they were asked to name causes, symptoms, and treatments for 25 common ailments. Additionally, the researchers gathered lists of all traditional remedies from key informants.
Four months into the fieldwork a Rapid Assessment Survey was conducted in the host communities and six additional villages. The anthropological team conducted 149 semi-structured interviews, with female heads of household whenever possible. They also asked informants to demonstrate their system of water transport, treatment and storage. Additional interviews were conducted with school teachers, village health promoters, and community leaders to gather demographic, cultural, and historical information.
To complete the fieldwork, the group of anthropologists conducted final interviews to build a database of quantitative data. The questions were carefully formulated and revised after a test trial. Informants were randomly selected from six communities and 210 interviews were completed.
Sources:
Ervin, Alexander M.
2000 Applied Anthropology: Tools and Perspectives for Contemporary
Practice.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Lind, Jason D.
2000 Biomedical Perspectives vs. Ethnomedical Perceptions: A Look at Health Beliefs and Behaviors
Relating to Diarrhea in Lowland Bolivia. Master's Thesis. Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Murphy, Arthur, Winifred Mitchell, Brian Riley, and 4 others.
1997 Proyecto de Agua Segura: "Claro" Ethnography, Intervention and Evaluation.
Technical Report presented to USAID/CCH, LA PAZ, and BOLIVIA.