Gender and Culture Influences on Attitudes towards National Park Punta Izopo, Honduras: An Assessment For Participatory Conservation and Management
By Kristen Conway

Index | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 |

Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Appendix | Literature Cited

Chapter Three: Methodology

West and Brechin (1991) suggest a framework that begins with the definition of residents, follows with the classification of the PA, and finishes with an analysis of the basic concepts in cultural preservation and rural development. This framework sets up a feasible and reasonable PA development process, from the perspective of resident people, PA planners, government officials, and tourism-affiliated individuals. It is appropriate for eliciting local participation in NPPI.

Achieving a better understanding of how to encourage appropriate community participation in natural resource conservation through cooperation with NPPI was the goal of this research. Determination of community members' likely behavior in regard to conservation and NPPI and factors influencing this behavior, was the means by which this goal was achieved. This process consisted of two objectives. The first objective was assessment of the three components that constitute behavior--attitude, knowledge and expectations (Triandis 1971). The second objective was to assess the role of gender and culture in influencing behavior.

Local resident behavior is taken to be an indicator of potential willingness to participate in the management and conservation of NPPI and therefore offers a means of promoting community-based involvement. Gender and culture were chosen as two of the main characteristics to offer insight into promoting appropriate means of community participation in the management and conservation processes.

Stages of Research

In-country research for local resident participation assessment was carried out in three phases. The first phase consisted of attendance at a workshop for the creation of a management plan for proposed Wildlife Refuge Punta Izopo (five days). The second phase consisted of interviews to ascertain the three components of behavior and key informant interviews (two months). The third phase consisted of solicitation of suggestions for participation from community members (16 days). Observation of the political, ecological, social and cultural realities was ongoing.

Sampling Method

Sample size for interviews was determined with the formula: no = z21-µP(1-P) / V. In this formula z21- is the critical value for a 90% confidence interval, P is the proportion of variation, and V is the desired variance of the sample proportion. This formula indicates a sample population of 68 for a 90% confidence interval. With two dependent variables, gender and culture, of two categories each, it was necessary to collect four sample populations. Thus the total sample population was 272.

Interviews were administered using a systematic sampling method (Appendix A). I implemented this methodology to reduce personally-introduced bias and to obtain a representative sample. The number of houses to skip between interviews was determined based on demographic data and revised based on experience in Honduras. The Garifuna community, El Triunfo de la Cruz, has approximately 8,000 inhabitants (Chavez and Espinal 1997) who live in 600 houses. In order to get 136 interviews in this community, I would have to visit every fourth house. When I began interviewing it became apparent that with this interval I would not obtain enough interviews--there was not always an adult home or the gender ratio would come out highly skewed. The interval was reduced to every other house to accommodate these conditions. This became especially important when population information was obtained for the ladino communities. Census information from the Centro de Salud surprisingly indicated that the total ladino population in the area was 3,842 (Centro de Salud Kilómetro 17 1997). This was lower than census information available from the municipality. I used data from the Centro de Salud because it was more conservative. With this smaller population a more frequent sampling interval was absolutely necessary.

I was introduced to each of the communities in which interviews were collected through one of two mechanisms. In the community of Triunfo de la Cruz, I was presented by the president of the patronato to community members at various meetings as a researcher working to collect information about people's attitudes about the protected area. In the ladino communities I made presentations to the teachers about my research. At these meetings I solicited volunteers to accompany me while interviewing.

Interviews were conducted in all communities with the assistance of a community member, except for Hicaque where I conducted some of the interviews alone. I did not have a community member to accompany me for all of the interviews in there because the woman who had volunteered to go with me was not available all ten days and I was unable to find another volunteer within the time I had to finish the interviews.

Locations of Data Collection

I interviewed people in the communities which lie in the buffer and nuclear zones of NPPI. I choose this population because I believe they are the people who will experience the most immediate impacts at the hand of park establishment and are the first candidates for participation. Urban residents in Tela are another important group that I did not have time to contact.

There are approximately 11 communities located in the buffer zone of NPPI and two within the core zone, as defined by PROLANSATE and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) (Figure 1.2 Map of Proposed National Park Punta Izopo). Two culture groups reside in these communities, Garifuna and ladinos. The Garifuna live almost solely in El Triunfo de la Cruz. The ladino communities in the buffer zone lie along the southwestern to northeastern borders of NPPI and include: El Boquete, Kilómetro Siete, Las Palmas, Kilómetro 12, Hicaque, Kilómetro 16, Atenas de San Cristóbal (commonly referred to as Kilómetro 17), Coloradito, Barra de Colorado and Carbajales. One ladino community, Sal Si Puedes, occupies a hilltop in the core zone. Attempts were made to get to all communities, but this was not logistically possible. Interviews were collected in the communities as follows: El Triunfo de la Cruz (142); El Boquete (10), Hicaque (35), Kilómetro 17 (71), Barra de Colorado (10), Carbajales (1) and Sal Si Puedes (3).

Workshop Attendance

The first week of in-country field work involved attendance at the "Workshop for Protected Area Planning on the Honduran North Coast". My participation in the workshop occurred from April 21 through April 26, 1997. During this time, I met the president of the patronato of El Triunfo de la Cruz, who identified some of the interest groups in the community for me. Representatives from these groups, plus others identified later, were interviewed with the open response portion of the interview (Section III Appendices B and C).

During the workshop the pilot questionnaire was tested and fine-tuned based on comments from fellow participants. All reviewers of the interview instruments were Hondurans who work for national and local conservation organizations. They were biologists, managers, policy makers, directors of protected areas in Honduras and community members. Their specific comments on language and terminology were incorporated into what became the final instrument (Appendix B).

Interviews

Three specific instruments were designed to assess behavior, each corresponding to one of the three components of behavior. Depending upon the interviewee, the instruments were read to the individual or the individual read the instruments on their own and responded. In all cases, I wrote out interviewee-indicated responses in a notebook.

The first part of the interview consisted of general demographic, land tenure and resource use questions (Section I Appendices B and C). The second part of the interview consisted of questions about resource use and access (Section II). Additionally, a small number of structured, open response interviews of selected members from each identified stakeholder group were conducted to provide interpretive detail for the behavioral assessment instruments (Section III). Six open-response interviews were conducted--one for each of the independent variables and an additional one in each culture group. These interviews, like the other interviews, were conducted with people who agreed to answer my questions.

The semantic differential (SD) instrument (Section IV) was employed to obtain a relatively direct indication of attitude (Azjen 1988). It assesses the measure of meaning of a concept based on a seven point scale with a set of bipolar adjectives, with a score of one to seven assigned to each response based on the given response (Azjen 1988). In this case I assigned one to the most negative response, four to the middle, or neutral response, and seven to the most positive response.

Interviewees were presented with two semantic differentials, one that asked them to indicate the words that best described NPPI in their opinion. The second SD asked for their opinion on conservation. Unless specifically asked, I offered no explanation of NPPI or conservation. I did this to minimize the influence of any inconsistent definitions I might create in the process.

The second assessment tool was a Likert-like scale (LS) (Section V). Likert scales are employed to ascertain multiple dimensions of internal attitudes (Bernard 1995). In this instrument, statements were phrased to assess local resident expectations about NPPI and conservation. Ten statements with a five point scale for response were presented to each interviewee. Interviewees were asked to give their response following the five possible choices--very much in disagreement, in agreement, neutral, in disagreement, and very much in disagreement. Responses were scored from one to five, with one representing a negative response (very much in disagreement) and five representing a positive response (very much in agreement).

Finally, information on local resident knowledge of natural history was assessed with a structured questionnaire (Section VI). The questionnaire consisted of eight questions with 16 possible correct answers. The questions were formatted as open-ended, true/false and multiple choice. Interviewees were asked for their responses to each of the eight questions.

Solicitation of Suggestions

Participation is based on active community involvement. This was the goal of the research and the specific objective of the qualitative interviews. During these interviews and at the community meetings I attended, I asked residents for suggestions and ideas on integrating them into management of the park. First, I wanted to know if they saw potential benefits coming to them and their communities from the park. Second, I wanted to know how they saw themselves involved in the park and receiving benefits from it. I also asked what capacities they possessed now that would facilitate their involvement.

Sharing with the Communities

Upon completion of the first phase of in-country research, a presentation was made to the community of El Triunfo de la Cruz to present preliminary findings to residents and solicit feedback on the researcher's initial interpretation of data. Due to time constraints, presentations were not made to all of the ladino communities. A letter of thanks was sent to the contact family in the community of Kilometro 17, where the majority of interviews in the first phase were completed. Upon completion of the second phase of data collection, a summary of data and findings was submitted to the radio station in El Triunfo de la Cruz for broadcast to the community. A summary of impressions was given to the president of the patronato of Hicaque, Enrique Cabello, where the majority of interviews in this phase were conducted. A formal written report was submitted to the director of PROLANSATE, Rafael Sambula, and the director of NPPI, Juan Carlos Carrasco.

I also made environmental education presentations to the two sixth grade classes in the primary school in El Triunfo de la Cruz. The presentations included sharing my impression of what a protected area represents and discussions about what the children consider a PA to represent. These presentations took place on August 19, 1997. Upon completion of thesis, summaries in Spanish were sent to presidents of each of the community associations in which interviews were conducted and to PROLANSATE.

Read Chapter Four.

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