Interview guide themes and sample questions
Theme / Sample questionsDemographics /
- Name, age, gender
- What is your social status in the village (school student, farmer, village headman, chief)?
- How long have you lived in Vusama? Do you plan to stay here?
- Household characteristics: who lives in your household – relation, age and occupation?
Livelihood characteristics /
- What food production activities do you engage in? (Fishing, crabbing, farming)
- How often do you do this? (Once a day/week/month)
- Where do you do this?
- What do you do with the produce? (sell at market, personal/household consumption, use for village barter system)
- How long have you engaged in this activity? How old were you when you started?
- Who taught you how to do this activity? Have you taught or are you teaching anyone?
Current exposure-sensitivities /
- What are the best conditions for engaging in each activity? Are these conditions common?
- What is considered bad conditions to engage in each activity? Do these conditions occur often?
- How do you get the ____ (fish, crabs, food crop) in times of bad conditions?
- What will happen if the bad conditions continue?
Current adaptive strategies /
- How are you dealing with the bad conditions? What do you do differently to deal with them? Are these strategies working?
- Is there something that has helped make one of the activities easier? Harder?
- Have the conditions always been like this? In the past when conditions were different, what did you do? Has this changed over time? How is the past different to today? Why is it different?
- Is there something we can learn from the past?
- Has this happened in other communities? What did they do?
Future vulnerability /
- What do you think will happen in the future? (E.g. longer dry season, wet season will return to normal)
- If the above conditions were to continue, what will you do?
- Is there something that could help you make it easier to deal with the future conditions?