Methodologies and Research Phases

3.0        Methodologies and research phases

3.1        Study area

The research was conducted in Manyoni District, Singida Region. The Manyoni District is in central part of Tanzania. The district is among the districts in Tanzania where the FGM practice prevails.  Manyoni District lies at 50 South and 330 East. It is administratively divided into five divisions, 76 villages, 314 hamlets and 2 electoral constituencies. The population size of the district is 205,423, of which 100,185 are males and the rest are females (URT, 2013).

3.2        People and culture

The inhabitants in the district have different cultural practices. The main ethnic groups found include Gogo, Nyaturu, Taturu, Nyakyusa, Barbaig and Sandawi. Various cultural practices in these ethnic groups among others include (i) female genital mutilation; (ii) male dominance with respect to material wealth ownership; (iii) early marriages to young girls, partly for families to get material wealth in terms of dowry price; (iv) cultural taboos whereby women and children are forbidden from eating certain varieties of foods; and (v) women’s workload is heavy compared to men.

3.3        Research and sampling design

A cross-sectional research design was adopted for this study. A simple random sampling design was used for selecting divisions, villages and respondents. Manyoni division was selected in the district. Three villages namely Aghondi, Kamenyanga and Mkwese were selected randomly. In each selected village, 40 respondents were randomly selected. A total sample size of 120 respondents was drawn for the study.

3.4        Data collection

The data were collected by using three methods namely focus group discussion (FGD), administration of questionnaire and key informant interview. The focus group discussion was held before setting the questionnaire. In each village, the focus group discussion was carried out by conducting discussion in small groups formulated by different actors. Five groups of girls, boys, older women, older men and mixture of representative category were formed and subjected to the discussion. Each group was formed by not more than 10 members and not less than 7 members. The questionnaire was formed of different types of closed and open-ended questions. The questionnaire was formed after obtaining information from the focus group discussion to allow quantification of some of the information. The information of the attitudes, social values, advantages, disadvantages, suitability of the existing intervention strategies, and suggestions on the subject of female genital mutilation was collected.

A Likert scale was a major component of the questionnaire for assessing attitudes of the respondents towards FGM. The Likert scale consisted of 20 statements, 10 of which implicitly showed negative attitudes, while the other 10 implicitly denoting positive attitudes towards the FGM. In the Likert scale, there were two alternative levels of agreement or disagreement to the statements and one neutral alternative answer. The alternative answers to the Likert scale statements were strongly disagree (1), disagree (2), undecided (3), agree (4), and strongly agree (5). Adding up the scores of one respondent, the least score was 20 that is one times 20, and the highest score was 100 that is 5 times 20. Twenty to 59 was meant negative attitude, 60 neutral, and 61 to 100 positive attitudes. In order to obtain information with respect of social values of the FGM, every answer in the Likert scale statements was followed by respondent’s arguments/reasons to support the selected alternative answers in the attitude assessment.