<jats:p>Researchers are calling on practitioners to use more robust mixed-method approaches... more <jats:p>Researchers are calling on practitioners to use more robust mixed-method approaches in program and product evaluations in the global development sector. Using qualitative and quantitative research methods from both experimental engineering and applied anthropology fields can provide more holistic and accurate information regarding potential impact and application of a product or program in its actual usage context.</jats:p> <jats:p>This paper presents a mixed-method approach for the evaluation of a new water treatment technology, the InStove Water Purifier. A combination of technical and ethnographic methods are used to estimate the product's efficacy in a high-school dormitory in Mbale, a city in Eastern Uganda. Methods include participant observation, focal follow, time allocation and data collection of system parameters including fuel usage, flowrate, and temperature. Additionally, a holistic approach to water treatment implementation is applied by experimentally evaluating water storage treatment methods to prevent recontamination of water before its point-of-use.</jats:p> <jats:p>This study highlights the importance of method triangulation and, more specifically, the value of ethnographic methods to evaluate engineering solutions. While two methods concluded statistically insignificant results (time allocation and fuel usage) due to limited sample size and duration of the study, this work emphasizes the value that comes from working closely with end-users in an uncontrolled experimental environment.</jats:p> <jats:p>Informal interviewing during participant observation combined with time allocation and fuel usage data show a high potential for user acceptance due to the Purifier's time and fuel savings (42% and 67% savings; respectively), increased water capacity, and reduction of emissions. Potential barriers to user adoption of the Purifier, identified in this study, include the trust required by users, lack of water outlet temperature control, and a size change of fuel wood. These findings have been reported to InStove, the manufacturer of the product, to begin design modifications to improve its potential impact to users.</jats:p> <jats:p>Ultimately, this paper aims to encourage engineering practitioners to become more comfortable performing ethnographic methods and integrating qualitative data to more accurately evaluate their projects in the field and provide design changes that increase user adoption and sustained impact.</jats:p>
This study uses semi-structured interviews and an online survey to explore the structure, challen... more This study uses semi-structured interviews and an online survey to explore the structure, challenges and outcomes of a five-year National Science Foundation-funded water scarcity modelling project in the Willamette River Basin of Oregon, USA. The research team chose to facilitate broader impacts by engaging stakeholders from the study’s inception (e.g. developing grant proposal, study implementations, defining model run scenarios) through its completion and extension of findings. The team used various engagement formats (field trips, small and large group meetings) and encountered many challenges, including the lack of a shared vision, different professional languages, research complexities and project management. Through stakeholder engagement the team overcame challenges, facilitated learning, and improved and extended the research process and results. Participation in engagement events was positively correlated with beneficial broader impact outcomes. We compare these outcomes wi...
Tilt, Bryan. Dams and development in China : the moral economy of water and power. New York : Col... more Tilt, Bryan. Dams and development in China : the moral economy of water and power. New York : Columbia University Press, 2015. XV-259 p. ISBN : 978-0-231-17010-9. China is home to half of the world's large dams and adds dozens more each year. The benefits are considerable: dams deliver hydropower, provide reliable irrigation water, protect people and farmland against flooding, and produce hydroelectricity in a nation with a seeimingly insatiable appetite for energy. As hydropower responds to ...
This paper presents new insights into contemporary Chinese demography and family life based on su... more This paper presents new insights into contemporary Chinese demography and family life based on survey and interview data from rural households in Yunnan Province, China's most ethnically and linguistically diverse region. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, we examine fertility trends, sex ratios, and son preferences in our study sample. We analyze differences between the majority Han and various ethnic minority groups that have been subject to less stringent family-planning policies. Our results show an overall fertility decline and a trend toward more balanced sex ratios, both of which are in line with national trends. We find evidence for son preference in the demographic data for both Han and minority households, despite widespread agreement in qualitative interviews rejecting the idea of son preference and emphasizing the value of both sons and daughters. We interpret these findings in light of several important changes in Chinese society, including legal and policy reforms governing marriage and inheritance, a nationwide "Care for Girls" social campaign, and shifting cultural norms about gender roles.
After decades of rapid economic development, China is facing severe environmental problems. In pa... more After decades of rapid economic development, China is facing severe environmental problems. In particular, smog in urban areas has recently attracted a great deal of scientific and media attention both domestically and internationally. Our focus in this article is on public perceptions of smog in the northern city of Tangshan, which is routinely ranked as one of the urban areas with the worst air quality in the nation. In this article, we present the results of qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys with 341 urban residents. We examine how these residents perceive and weigh the importance of various aspects related to quality of life, including their experience with air pollution. Study participants considered environmental quality an issue of lower priority than many others; however, they surprisingly ranked it over economic concerns such as jobs and income. Their responses suggest that, for many urban residents, environmental problems like smog are fundamentally linked to...
Abstract Often in engineering for global development, product designers do not have the time or r... more Abstract Often in engineering for global development, product designers do not have the time or resources to conduct long-term technology adoption studies with large sample sizes for every iteration of their design and therefore must rely on shorter, targeted studies that measure both the technical and user acceptance parameters. This work presents a combination of experimental engineering and rapid anthropological methods to provide a mixed-methods approach to evaluate and improve the design of a novel water treatment technology, the InStove Water Purifier. This product uses the principles of pasteurization and heat recuperation to theoretically reduce energy consumption for water purification by 97% in a continuous process, producing enough water for 1400 people each day. The case study in Mbale, Uganda, used rapid ethnographic methods that included participant observation, focal follow, and time allocation; and engineering performance experiments that included fuel efficiency tests, water bacteria measurements, and data collection of temperature and flow rates. Data from all methods were synthesized in a Diffusion of Innovations (DoI) framework to gain insight into potential barriers and benefits of adoption of the technology within this specific context. As defined in a DoI framework, potential benefits to adoption include decreased overall time and labor to purify water, decrease in use of biomass resources, increase in overall water throughput, and low learning curve for the product operator. Similarly, potential barriers to user acceptance include the trust required by users towards product efficacy, lack of customization, and potentially undesirable changes in time allocation and fuel wood preparation.
Increasing labor costs and changes in labor forces have prompted an increased demand for automati... more Increasing labor costs and changes in labor forces have prompted an increased demand for automation in specialty crop production. Implementation of technological innovations in the agricultural sector tends to be slow, thus this study investigated motivations and perceptions of technology. Using qualitative interviewing and analysis, this study used a diffusion of innovations framework to gain insight into what channels of communications impacted planned adoption rates and what aspects of technology influence the decision-making process. Interview participants emphasized the inevitability of implementing new technologies while considering the capital investment of more complex technology, changes in labor management to integrate technology, applicability of technology to current practices, and trust in technology designers.
China's air pollution crisis, which has profound effects on the environment and human health, has... more China's air pollution crisis, which has profound effects on the environment and human health, has attracted a great deal of scientific and media attention both domestically and internationally. Over the past few years, major policy initiatives for pollution abatement have been put in place, and air-quality monitoring data in many regions has actually begun to show marked and sustained improvement. This article serves as an introduction to the special journal issue entitled "China's air pollution crisis: Science and Policy perspectives," which brings together new empirical contributions on this important topic. The article outlines past trends in the air pollution crisis and examines emerging research to discuss what the future may hold. It also provides an in-depth analysis of the various measuresincluding scientific and technological innovation in key sectors such as energy, top-down policy initiatives, and citizen engagementthat are integral to the emissions reductions now being achieved. Finally, the article considers the implications of these trends for the control of air pollution in China today and into the future.
Air pollution in China, increasingly known in policy circles and in popular discourse as "smog" (... more Air pollution in China, increasingly known in policy circles and in popular discourse as "smog" (wumai), has aroused broad concern among citizens and in the international community. Although poor air quality has been a feature of urban life for decades in China, public engagement with the issue is a more recent phenomenon. In this article, we examine public knowledge and perceptions of smog, public trust in various sources of information about smog, and various actions, both individual and institutional, that people believe can be effective in managing and mitigating smog. We draw upon qualitative interviews and quantitative survey data collected in Tangshan, a heavily industrialized city in northern China. Our findings illustrate that smog, with its effects on human health and quality of life, is perceived as a serious concern that people encounter every day. Various information sources on the severity of air pollution, including online media content and mobile apps, are increasingly accessed by the public. Our findings suggest that trust in these information sources is shaped by a variety of demographic factors, especially educational attainment. We also find a sense of ambivalence among study participants about which specific individual and institutional measures can and should be taken to manage and mitigate the effects of smog. We discuss these findings in light of recent research on the role of public awareness and engagement in environmental protection campaigns. (Philip, 2014), along with specific instructions of reducing coal consumption by closing polluting mills, factories, and smelters, and switching to other eco-friendly energy sources (Chohan, 2014). The latest plan involves closing outdated industrial plants in industries such as iron, steel, aluminum, and cement and increasing nuclear capacity and other non-fossil fuel energy. According to early stage assessment reports released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, average PM 2.5 levels in 74 key cities showed a 23.6% decrease between 2013 and 2015. Despite a few red-alert warnings in early 2017, periods in which daily averages were at hazardous levels for multiple consecutive days, northern Chinese cities are beginning to consistently meet air quality targets. While smog itself, and the government's responses to the air pollution crisis, have attracted widespread media attention, public engagements with smog remain relatively unexamined. Yet public engagements with smog, including knowledge, perceptions, actions and
h i g h l i g h t s • Researchers must address participant expectations for better collaborative ... more h i g h l i g h t s • Researchers must address participant expectations for better collaborative research. • Transdisciplinary collaborators differ in expectations for research process/products. • Participants expect to play different roles during the research process. • Collaborators participate primarily because they were personally invited to do so.
Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, 2007
The articles in this special issue all are based on original fieldwork in China. The authors made... more The articles in this special issue all are based on original fieldwork in China. The authors made presentations on their work in a session at the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting in Vancouver BC, on March 29, 2006. Since that time we have shared drafts of our manuscripts and integrated our work to illustrate both the diversity of the development enterprise in China and common themes emerging from indigenous norms and social structures.
Increasing labor costs and changes in labor forces have prompted an increased demand for automati... more Increasing labor costs and changes in labor forces have prompted an increased demand for automation in specialty crop production. Implementation of technological innovations in the agricultural sector tends to be slow, thus this study investigated motivations and perceptions of technology. Using qualitative interviewing and analysis, this study used a diffusion of innovations framework to gain insight into what channels of communications impacted planned adoption rates and what aspects of technology influence the decision-making process. Interview participants emphasized the inevitability of implementing new technologies while considering the capital investment of more complex technology, changes in labor management to integrate technology, applicability of technology to current practices, and trust in technology designers.
Plastic mulch is commonly used with micro-irrigation in developed countries; however, Chinese far... more Plastic mulch is commonly used with micro-irrigation in developed countries; however, Chinese farmers use plastic mulch on a vast scale independent of micro-irrigation. For the past three decades, China's land area in plastic mulch has exceeded the world's total land area in micro-irrigation. We report results from the water-scarce region of Minqin County, where 87% of Chinese farmers interviewed responded that they use plastic mulch to conserve water and 53% to increase yields. Survey results indicated the desire to conserve water through the use of plastic mulch to be statistically equivalent to the desire to increase yields. Responses to interviews and surveys indicate that farmers perceive water savings of 24-26% when plastic mulch is used. Interview and survey responses suggest farming families are shifting to purchasing wheat from outside the region; a potential import of ''virtual water'' into this water-scarce region.
China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is experiencing a marked decline in grassland quality pa... more China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is experiencing a marked decline in grassland quality partially as a result of government policies to sedentarize nomadic pastoralists and privatized collective grasslands. Previous research suggests that traditional forms of cooperation among Inner Mongolian pastoralists have deteriorated as a result of privatization and sedentarization. Herders in New Barag Right Banner (n = 50) representing both sedentary and mobile livestock management strategies were asked to respond to a scaled survey regarding their attitudes towards cooperation with other pastoralists. Inter-rater reliability and Mann–Whitney U Tests were utilized to compare the attitudes towards cooperation across sedentary and mobile settlement categories and to assess whether or not sedentary and mobile herders share the same cultural model regarding cooperation. The authors show that there is both high intra- and inter-group agreement on the survey variables across settlement categories, indicating that sedentary and mobile herders share the same cultural model regardless of their settlement pattern.
<jats:p>Researchers are calling on practitioners to use more robust mixed-method approaches... more <jats:p>Researchers are calling on practitioners to use more robust mixed-method approaches in program and product evaluations in the global development sector. Using qualitative and quantitative research methods from both experimental engineering and applied anthropology fields can provide more holistic and accurate information regarding potential impact and application of a product or program in its actual usage context.</jats:p> <jats:p>This paper presents a mixed-method approach for the evaluation of a new water treatment technology, the InStove Water Purifier. A combination of technical and ethnographic methods are used to estimate the product's efficacy in a high-school dormitory in Mbale, a city in Eastern Uganda. Methods include participant observation, focal follow, time allocation and data collection of system parameters including fuel usage, flowrate, and temperature. Additionally, a holistic approach to water treatment implementation is applied by experimentally evaluating water storage treatment methods to prevent recontamination of water before its point-of-use.</jats:p> <jats:p>This study highlights the importance of method triangulation and, more specifically, the value of ethnographic methods to evaluate engineering solutions. While two methods concluded statistically insignificant results (time allocation and fuel usage) due to limited sample size and duration of the study, this work emphasizes the value that comes from working closely with end-users in an uncontrolled experimental environment.</jats:p> <jats:p>Informal interviewing during participant observation combined with time allocation and fuel usage data show a high potential for user acceptance due to the Purifier's time and fuel savings (42% and 67% savings; respectively), increased water capacity, and reduction of emissions. Potential barriers to user adoption of the Purifier, identified in this study, include the trust required by users, lack of water outlet temperature control, and a size change of fuel wood. These findings have been reported to InStove, the manufacturer of the product, to begin design modifications to improve its potential impact to users.</jats:p> <jats:p>Ultimately, this paper aims to encourage engineering practitioners to become more comfortable performing ethnographic methods and integrating qualitative data to more accurately evaluate their projects in the field and provide design changes that increase user adoption and sustained impact.</jats:p>
This study uses semi-structured interviews and an online survey to explore the structure, challen... more This study uses semi-structured interviews and an online survey to explore the structure, challenges and outcomes of a five-year National Science Foundation-funded water scarcity modelling project in the Willamette River Basin of Oregon, USA. The research team chose to facilitate broader impacts by engaging stakeholders from the study’s inception (e.g. developing grant proposal, study implementations, defining model run scenarios) through its completion and extension of findings. The team used various engagement formats (field trips, small and large group meetings) and encountered many challenges, including the lack of a shared vision, different professional languages, research complexities and project management. Through stakeholder engagement the team overcame challenges, facilitated learning, and improved and extended the research process and results. Participation in engagement events was positively correlated with beneficial broader impact outcomes. We compare these outcomes wi...
Tilt, Bryan. Dams and development in China : the moral economy of water and power. New York : Col... more Tilt, Bryan. Dams and development in China : the moral economy of water and power. New York : Columbia University Press, 2015. XV-259 p. ISBN : 978-0-231-17010-9. China is home to half of the world's large dams and adds dozens more each year. The benefits are considerable: dams deliver hydropower, provide reliable irrigation water, protect people and farmland against flooding, and produce hydroelectricity in a nation with a seeimingly insatiable appetite for energy. As hydropower responds to ...
This paper presents new insights into contemporary Chinese demography and family life based on su... more This paper presents new insights into contemporary Chinese demography and family life based on survey and interview data from rural households in Yunnan Province, China's most ethnically and linguistically diverse region. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, we examine fertility trends, sex ratios, and son preferences in our study sample. We analyze differences between the majority Han and various ethnic minority groups that have been subject to less stringent family-planning policies. Our results show an overall fertility decline and a trend toward more balanced sex ratios, both of which are in line with national trends. We find evidence for son preference in the demographic data for both Han and minority households, despite widespread agreement in qualitative interviews rejecting the idea of son preference and emphasizing the value of both sons and daughters. We interpret these findings in light of several important changes in Chinese society, including legal and policy reforms governing marriage and inheritance, a nationwide "Care for Girls" social campaign, and shifting cultural norms about gender roles.
After decades of rapid economic development, China is facing severe environmental problems. In pa... more After decades of rapid economic development, China is facing severe environmental problems. In particular, smog in urban areas has recently attracted a great deal of scientific and media attention both domestically and internationally. Our focus in this article is on public perceptions of smog in the northern city of Tangshan, which is routinely ranked as one of the urban areas with the worst air quality in the nation. In this article, we present the results of qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys with 341 urban residents. We examine how these residents perceive and weigh the importance of various aspects related to quality of life, including their experience with air pollution. Study participants considered environmental quality an issue of lower priority than many others; however, they surprisingly ranked it over economic concerns such as jobs and income. Their responses suggest that, for many urban residents, environmental problems like smog are fundamentally linked to...
Abstract Often in engineering for global development, product designers do not have the time or r... more Abstract Often in engineering for global development, product designers do not have the time or resources to conduct long-term technology adoption studies with large sample sizes for every iteration of their design and therefore must rely on shorter, targeted studies that measure both the technical and user acceptance parameters. This work presents a combination of experimental engineering and rapid anthropological methods to provide a mixed-methods approach to evaluate and improve the design of a novel water treatment technology, the InStove Water Purifier. This product uses the principles of pasteurization and heat recuperation to theoretically reduce energy consumption for water purification by 97% in a continuous process, producing enough water for 1400 people each day. The case study in Mbale, Uganda, used rapid ethnographic methods that included participant observation, focal follow, and time allocation; and engineering performance experiments that included fuel efficiency tests, water bacteria measurements, and data collection of temperature and flow rates. Data from all methods were synthesized in a Diffusion of Innovations (DoI) framework to gain insight into potential barriers and benefits of adoption of the technology within this specific context. As defined in a DoI framework, potential benefits to adoption include decreased overall time and labor to purify water, decrease in use of biomass resources, increase in overall water throughput, and low learning curve for the product operator. Similarly, potential barriers to user acceptance include the trust required by users towards product efficacy, lack of customization, and potentially undesirable changes in time allocation and fuel wood preparation.
Increasing labor costs and changes in labor forces have prompted an increased demand for automati... more Increasing labor costs and changes in labor forces have prompted an increased demand for automation in specialty crop production. Implementation of technological innovations in the agricultural sector tends to be slow, thus this study investigated motivations and perceptions of technology. Using qualitative interviewing and analysis, this study used a diffusion of innovations framework to gain insight into what channels of communications impacted planned adoption rates and what aspects of technology influence the decision-making process. Interview participants emphasized the inevitability of implementing new technologies while considering the capital investment of more complex technology, changes in labor management to integrate technology, applicability of technology to current practices, and trust in technology designers.
China's air pollution crisis, which has profound effects on the environment and human health, has... more China's air pollution crisis, which has profound effects on the environment and human health, has attracted a great deal of scientific and media attention both domestically and internationally. Over the past few years, major policy initiatives for pollution abatement have been put in place, and air-quality monitoring data in many regions has actually begun to show marked and sustained improvement. This article serves as an introduction to the special journal issue entitled "China's air pollution crisis: Science and Policy perspectives," which brings together new empirical contributions on this important topic. The article outlines past trends in the air pollution crisis and examines emerging research to discuss what the future may hold. It also provides an in-depth analysis of the various measuresincluding scientific and technological innovation in key sectors such as energy, top-down policy initiatives, and citizen engagementthat are integral to the emissions reductions now being achieved. Finally, the article considers the implications of these trends for the control of air pollution in China today and into the future.
Air pollution in China, increasingly known in policy circles and in popular discourse as "smog" (... more Air pollution in China, increasingly known in policy circles and in popular discourse as "smog" (wumai), has aroused broad concern among citizens and in the international community. Although poor air quality has been a feature of urban life for decades in China, public engagement with the issue is a more recent phenomenon. In this article, we examine public knowledge and perceptions of smog, public trust in various sources of information about smog, and various actions, both individual and institutional, that people believe can be effective in managing and mitigating smog. We draw upon qualitative interviews and quantitative survey data collected in Tangshan, a heavily industrialized city in northern China. Our findings illustrate that smog, with its effects on human health and quality of life, is perceived as a serious concern that people encounter every day. Various information sources on the severity of air pollution, including online media content and mobile apps, are increasingly accessed by the public. Our findings suggest that trust in these information sources is shaped by a variety of demographic factors, especially educational attainment. We also find a sense of ambivalence among study participants about which specific individual and institutional measures can and should be taken to manage and mitigate the effects of smog. We discuss these findings in light of recent research on the role of public awareness and engagement in environmental protection campaigns. (Philip, 2014), along with specific instructions of reducing coal consumption by closing polluting mills, factories, and smelters, and switching to other eco-friendly energy sources (Chohan, 2014). The latest plan involves closing outdated industrial plants in industries such as iron, steel, aluminum, and cement and increasing nuclear capacity and other non-fossil fuel energy. According to early stage assessment reports released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, average PM 2.5 levels in 74 key cities showed a 23.6% decrease between 2013 and 2015. Despite a few red-alert warnings in early 2017, periods in which daily averages were at hazardous levels for multiple consecutive days, northern Chinese cities are beginning to consistently meet air quality targets. While smog itself, and the government's responses to the air pollution crisis, have attracted widespread media attention, public engagements with smog remain relatively unexamined. Yet public engagements with smog, including knowledge, perceptions, actions and
h i g h l i g h t s • Researchers must address participant expectations for better collaborative ... more h i g h l i g h t s • Researchers must address participant expectations for better collaborative research. • Transdisciplinary collaborators differ in expectations for research process/products. • Participants expect to play different roles during the research process. • Collaborators participate primarily because they were personally invited to do so.
Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, 2007
The articles in this special issue all are based on original fieldwork in China. The authors made... more The articles in this special issue all are based on original fieldwork in China. The authors made presentations on their work in a session at the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting in Vancouver BC, on March 29, 2006. Since that time we have shared drafts of our manuscripts and integrated our work to illustrate both the diversity of the development enterprise in China and common themes emerging from indigenous norms and social structures.
Increasing labor costs and changes in labor forces have prompted an increased demand for automati... more Increasing labor costs and changes in labor forces have prompted an increased demand for automation in specialty crop production. Implementation of technological innovations in the agricultural sector tends to be slow, thus this study investigated motivations and perceptions of technology. Using qualitative interviewing and analysis, this study used a diffusion of innovations framework to gain insight into what channels of communications impacted planned adoption rates and what aspects of technology influence the decision-making process. Interview participants emphasized the inevitability of implementing new technologies while considering the capital investment of more complex technology, changes in labor management to integrate technology, applicability of technology to current practices, and trust in technology designers.
Plastic mulch is commonly used with micro-irrigation in developed countries; however, Chinese far... more Plastic mulch is commonly used with micro-irrigation in developed countries; however, Chinese farmers use plastic mulch on a vast scale independent of micro-irrigation. For the past three decades, China's land area in plastic mulch has exceeded the world's total land area in micro-irrigation. We report results from the water-scarce region of Minqin County, where 87% of Chinese farmers interviewed responded that they use plastic mulch to conserve water and 53% to increase yields. Survey results indicated the desire to conserve water through the use of plastic mulch to be statistically equivalent to the desire to increase yields. Responses to interviews and surveys indicate that farmers perceive water savings of 24-26% when plastic mulch is used. Interview and survey responses suggest farming families are shifting to purchasing wheat from outside the region; a potential import of ''virtual water'' into this water-scarce region.
China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is experiencing a marked decline in grassland quality pa... more China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is experiencing a marked decline in grassland quality partially as a result of government policies to sedentarize nomadic pastoralists and privatized collective grasslands. Previous research suggests that traditional forms of cooperation among Inner Mongolian pastoralists have deteriorated as a result of privatization and sedentarization. Herders in New Barag Right Banner (n = 50) representing both sedentary and mobile livestock management strategies were asked to respond to a scaled survey regarding their attitudes towards cooperation with other pastoralists. Inter-rater reliability and Mann–Whitney U Tests were utilized to compare the attitudes towards cooperation across sedentary and mobile settlement categories and to assess whether or not sedentary and mobile herders share the same cultural model regarding cooperation. The authors show that there is both high intra- and inter-group agreement on the survey variables across settlement categories, indicating that sedentary and mobile herders share the same cultural model regardless of their settlement pattern.
Uploads
Papers by Bryan Tilt