Cervical Screening Fieldwork in Rural and Conflict-prone settings in North-eastern Nigeria: Reflections, Challenges, and Lessons Learned.

Abstract

Challenges of conducting field research in predominantly rural communities and conflict-prone settings are common because of low literacy, insecurity and frequent views of mistrust and fear among the inhabitants. These settings put inexperienced and unprepared researchers into enormous physical and psychological difficulties. There is limited training for conducting fieldwork, including published materials to guide new researchers looking to conduct research in these settings. This article narrates the reflections from doctoral research fieldwork highlighting the main methodological and ethical challenges encountered during mixed-methods research – participant survey and stakeholder interview, conducted in Gombe State, Nigeria in the last quarter of the year 2019. The 4 main challenges encountered in the fieldwork were: ensuring researcher and participant safety; choosing study locations and gaining access; recruiting participants and building trust; and maintaining participants’ privacy and confidentiality of data. The approaches employed to address these challenges were drawn from the prior knowledge and links with local players in the settings, field note keeping, comprehensive institutional ethical review, periodic debriefing with Research Assistants (RA),contact persons, advisers, supervisors, and the literature. It is hoped that these reflections will benefit future researchers facing similar challenges and address information gap in conducting fieldwork in rural and conflict-prone settings in developing nations.