If a questionnaire is used to collect data on adaptive capacity of farmers to extreme climatic conditions and if we depend more on the data collected through the questionnaire survey, what impact it will have on the study results.
Five capitals approach:viz; Natural, capital, Human, Social, physical and financial capitals of individual households will provide the capacity to adapt.
It depends in part where you are gathering your data. I would suggest solid reading on resilient communities and adaptive capacities. But the primary method I would recommend (especially if your participants are anywhere in South East Asia) is good solid participant observation. I work with farmers in India and I find that when they are completing questionnaires, their responses are often choreographed according to what they think is a good response. It's often very different to their lived experience. Even if their responses don't contrast with their lived experience entirely, participant observation will reveal a far deeper and more complex reality than anything remotely formal such as questionnaires and surveys etc. If this is your first time with this particular social/ cultural group of farmers I would suggest participant observation first. Then on the basis of the themes and threads gathered from that, design your interview questionnaire after some time of participant observation. Your questions are much more likely to be relevant. I discovered this after a recent trip to India where - being "familiar" with India - I designed a survey I thought was highly relevant, only to discover many of the questions were repetitive and/or irrelevant to the farmers and important areas not considered. A good reminder and lesson for me. Participant observation keeps us humble. And skilled.
Are there good composite socioeconomic data indicators that could complement any interview or questionnaire data? At the least, these might help to give you a baseline estimate for current vulnerabilities/resilience, to be then complemented with your survey or interview results.
Household or community level survey based on questionnaire may be options. One can use any socio-ecological framework to assess it (i.e. for indicator selection). We are trying to measure empirically the adaptation at Himalayas at low scale.
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