Over the last few weeks, I’ve been organizing and holding focus groups in different communities in the upper part of the Bellbird Corridor. These were actually the first focus groups I had ever led. While I’m sure I made a few mistakes along the way, they definitely helped me move my research forward and were a good learning experience!
The process of organizing the focus groups in rural Costa Rica gave me a whole new appreciation for the ease by which we are able to organize meetings by email back home. Many people in this area don’t use email, so after getting lists of recommended participants from local collaborators, I had to either call them or go find them at their places of business. I was a little intimated about this at first, but it ended up being a good opportunity to make connections with lots of different people in the community (and practice my Spanish 🙂 )
Another challenge in organizing the groups was maintaining gender balance. It turned out to be particularly difficult to get Costa Rican women to attend. Multiple people had told me that reforestation is primarily a male-dominated activity here, with the exception of resident gringas, who have been very involved with reforestation, with some even leading local reforestation initiatives. This was reflected in my focus group attendance, as all but one of the women I was able to successfully recruit were white. Even if women haven’t been as involved with reforestation, I still think it is important capture their perspectives, as they may perceive a different set of costs and benefits associated with reforestation and conservation. I am hoping that as I spend more time here and as I start doing surveys and interviews, I will have more opportunities to engage Costa Rican women in my research.
In the focus groups, I used an online tool called Mental Modeler (www.mentalmodeler.com) to map out both the motivations and the social and environmental impacts of various reforestation and conservation activities. It was interesting to see how different people in the focus groups responded to the tool. It seemed like younger people got really into making the models and making connections between different components of the models. On the other hand, it seemed like some of the older farmers really just wanted to talk about their experiences and weren’t as interested in putting their experiences into boxes for my model. While I made some efforts to translate what they were saying into the model, I ultimately recognized that it would be more useful to listen to their stories and ask pertinent follow-up questions in the moment, and wait and build the models later based on recordings of the groups.
After holding three focus groups in different communities, I held an “experts” focus group to help refine and interpret the models from the community focus groups. This was also a great opportunity to get a diverse group of people that have been involved with reforestation and conservation in the region in the same room. I feel lucky to have support from such a smart and well-connected group of people!
I have been using the information from these focus groups to develop survey and interview questions for the next phase of my research. Even though this process of engaging the community with the development of my research has definitely taken some time, I am also confident that my surveys and interviews will yield more relevant information than they would have otherwise. I have also really enjoyed getting to know more about the local communities and the fascinating people that live here!
