Abstract
BackgroundQualitative study of motivations to participate in research into violence and other sensitive issues can help interpretation of findings from community based quantitative surveys. It is equally important to conduct research that may enable a deeper understanding on what motivates people to participate in GBV studies. To date, not much research has been conducted to investigate the factors that influence non-enrolment and enrolment in GBV studies from the viewpoint of the real participants. The present study sought to explore people’s reasons for participating in a non-intervention GBV community-based survey in Gauteng province, South Africa.MethodsTwenty-two qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with adult black African men and women who had participated in a gender-based violence survey conducted in a low-income setting in South Africa.ResultsSome participants reported motives for survey participation which could be interpreted as altruistic. Their motives included a desire to contribute to advancement of knowledge and to share life experiences so that unknown others could learn from these experiences. Yet, some participants hoped their participation will result in personal benefit or that they may be helped with their socio-economic challenges. The analysis further revealed a complex relationship between altruism and self-interest motives for participating in the survey amongst some of the participants.ConclusionWe conclude that it is difficult to discern which motive was primary or preceded the other. This is because such motives are not fixed, probably multiple and owing to their fluidity, may shift in people’s minds at different times and depending on the nature of the conversation. Moreover, there may be a shift in the weight given to different motives over time.
Highlights
Qualitative study of motivations to participate in research into violence and other sensitive issues can help interpretation of findings from community based quantitative surveys
In the interviews participants reported that their survey participation was motivated by a number of reasons from which three thematic areas were identified: altruism, self-interest, and interconnectedness between altruism and self-interest, and we present the findings of our analysis and interpretation below
They mentioned that they were motivated by the desire to share their lived experiences in order to contribute to knowledge generation and for unspecified others to learn from such experiences
Summary
Qualitative study of motivations to participate in research into violence and other sensitive issues can help interpretation of findings from community based quantitative surveys. The present study sought to explore people’s reasons for participating in a non-intervention GBV community-based survey in Gauteng province, South Africa. Other studies have shown that people may be motivated by a desire to benefit family, friends or future generations, to obtain personal information or increase understanding about the result of a research experiment, condition or drug, and to do something worthwhile for interventions which may aid in curbing diseases prevalent in their communities [1, 3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
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