fellowship 2007

During the fellowship 2007, the following survey methods were employed in the USA and Brazil markets primary data collection research. The team’s investigation was done through in-person interviews at the market and the immediate neighborhood in which the market exists, as well as shadowing various subjects at the market.

Interviews: we sampled the personal interviews (designed to take about 3 minutes per interviewee) of:

Customers at the Market
Vendors at the Market
Residents in the vicinity of the Markets

Observations: we also sampled the “shadowing” observations of:

Customers at the Market
Vendors at the Market
Overall observation of the market space

The fellows conducted the field surveys in both New Orleans, USA and Santarém, Brazil. Paid interviewers were recruited and trained for each local site to work with the fellows to help the data-gathering effort, through local community-based organizations’ cooperation. The surveys were conducted in the markets of interest over the span of eight weeks. The team’s investigation was done through in-person interviews of customers and vendors at markets, interviews residents of the surrounding communities through door-knocking, shadowing of customers and vendors at the market, and observing the market spaces. Each market and the surrounding neighborhoods was visited at least twice, by between three and four surveyors, and the following surveys were conducted on each site visit:

Market Observation
Vendor Tent Observation
Shopper Observation
Shopper Interview
Resident Interview
Vendor Interview
Market Tracker

Participatory Urban Appraisals (PUA): Qualitative participatory approaches at the community-level provide insights into the experiences of market among various groups in a way that macro-level analyses (i.e. our survey instruments) cannot. We have designed a series of participatory urban appraisal (PUA) sessions in the groups discussion format, with the two main purposes:

To complement our field survey results by getting deeper into some of the more discussion-worthy issues and topics;
To pilot-test the methods to see its feasibility – conceptually, operationally, and for capacity-building potential (for the facilitating leaders).

We executed our PUA sessions only in New Orleans-US and not in Santarém-Brazil this summer, due to the overall time constraint, limited exposure to the Brazilian/Amazon culture and language. We hope that our group sessions design and execution method will be refined and documented from the US site exercise this summer, so that the Brazil site can execute them in the following phase. We designed all the sessions to be with up to five participants, and we executed four types of groups as listed below. All sessions have been conducted successfully with eighteen participants in total.

Women Shoppers Group from all five markets
Vendors Group from Crescent City Farmers Market (both Tuesday and Saturday Markets)
Residents Group from the Upper 9th Ward, New Orleans
Residents Group from Biloxi, Mississippi

Topics we covered include:

Community & Institutional mapping
Pre- & Post-Katrina comparison
Market’s Influence in Your Community
Why don’t you shop at the market?
What services could be offered at the market?

View some of the working documents by the Fellows 2007