Seeing research problems as trees: Analysing data through a locally led participatory tree exercise
Keywords:
Participatory Tree Exercise, Co-generative Knowledge Production, Alternative Development, Disability Inclusion, Sub-Saharan Africa, Locally Led AnalysisAbstract
Although research participants are invited to share their experiences during the data collection stage, conventional research often excludes them from the data analysis process. The tendency to position external researchers as ‘experts imparting knowledge’ and local participants as ‘novices attaining knowledge’, undermines the varied ways in which locally situated participants are experts in their day-to-day lives. In my exploration of the sensitive and complex exclusion of young people with disability in Uganda, I adopted a locally led participatory tree exercise, where research participants were invited to contribute to the data analysis process. Through drawing on the analogy of a problem tree and solution tree, this research situates participants at the grassroots level as experts in their analysis of the intertwined social, economic and political dimensions of disability in Uganda. Inviting participants into the data analysis process counters the unequal power relations that tend to focus on external ‘experts’ in the production of knowledge.
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