My advice would be for you to start with the basics. Gain physical, logistical and psychological access to the affected community and build trust. Is that even the right research question to ask? Why don't you find out, by embedding with those who were married as children, what is the right question to ask? What makes you assume that you have even framed it in the right way? Do you even have the same definition of "education" as they do? Do you mean formal or informal education? Do they look at marriage as a place for continued "maturation" and "formation", i.e., an alternative "school" with the older man as their new "teacher"? In other words, take the necessary time to embed with them and start to gain deeper insight into their world before you even decide what are the right questions to ask and what are the methods to use. Let the perspectives and interests of the girls who were married as children "drive" the research agenda.

Begin with a very open mind and let what they say to you and show you determine how you proceed. Reach out to them. "Live" among them in their "field". Watch them. Listen to them. Befriend them. Earn their trust. Get them to be comfortable around you. To begin to consider you as an "insider" (one of them) or at least an empathetic outsider. What concerns do they express? How are they building their knowledge and skills? Start there. Tell them to explain to you what is going on with their literacy or numeracy. Hear their stories. What questions do they have? Investigate those. Begin with very open-ended interviews where you let them talk and you just listen. Once a recurrent them emerges, follow that trail. Then use whatever combination of methods is necessary to gather data on that theme, e.g. additional interviews, participant observation, focus groups, targeted surveys.

ijl.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.30/prod.1726

http://www.aanet.org/sections/cae/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Ethnography__ECE_Brief_Final_Adair2.pdf

Many thanks, Dr.Anthony Waddimba for your great input and the reading materials you have provided for me. The second material could not be accessed though, I appreciate your comment.

Dear Afolayan,

I find this link very informative. Hope it helps.

http://www.slideshare.net/fhuertamty/ethnographic-approach

Best wishes,

Cameen

Here's what's available in RG:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254407333_Measuring_child_marriage

Article Measuring child marriage

I just wish to say, Gbenga (and with respect to Anthony, whose suggestions of exposure to local culture, ways, opinions to inform ethnographic research are quite on target in many respects), of course it is a legitimate and necessary question to ask about the impacts on girls' education (and other markers of wellbeing) of early/childhood marriage, in a context of awareness of human rights.

It is widely known now that early/childhood marriage impacts deleteriously on girls' wellbeing, health, and development. So it seems inappropriate to me somehow - as an unashamed feminist - that Anthony is urging you to use immersive research techniques by picking up on language of 'embedding' with those who have married early, and also suggesting you need to examine yourself very stringently as to whether you should even ask such a question, or even to place an adult/older husband in the role of 'teacher'. Girls deserve a fair chance of a healthy, happy, safe and fulfilling life. No 'traditional' culture should be imposed on girls to such an extent as to compromise their wellbeing and basic human rights (such as early/child marriage, or female genital mutilation, for example). The right to education for girls is a topic being realised in developmental contexts all over the world. Why should African countries be any different in expecting that their girls can succeed in endeavours other than being within a household (and in this case, of early/child marriage, in being within a household often as a person who is often ill or disabled by their role)?

Tass, your views on early childhood marriage concur 100% with my personal opinions. But I've learned, in ethnographic research not to impose my personal viewpoint or to prejudge any situation and pontificate about how the participants should think like me. I find such judgemental impositions counterproductive as they portray me as an elitist among such disadvantaged communities, which defeats the purpose of my community based research. I see my research and my science as a service to the participants. When I choose an ethnographic approach, it is because I do not know or understand the motives of the behavior under study and would like to make no condescending presumptions about the people involved in the behavior under study. I also engage in advocacy work, which is different from research. What I shared with Gbenga is my approach to ethnographic research, not to advocacy (which often comes after the research findings are analyzed and reported).

Hi Gbenga Afolayan,

If you have already established rapport with the study community and have easy access to your target research participants you can try with semi-structured interviews for conducting both individual and focus group interviews at the rural setting. You can also try with snowball or chain referral sampling for selecting your most desired research participants. While conducting interviews you might choose to use digital voice recorder. Note that you must use informed consent forms before recording such interviews. For conducting research in urban setting, depending on your accessibility to research participants you can use semi-structures interviews methods to record how child marriage affects girls’ education as well. 

Social actors probably hold theoretical insights in the phenomenon you want to investigate. So I think grounded theory could be a suitable methodological approach. The constant comparative method would allow to integrate view-points from inside and outside local communities and to develop a common theory.