Methodology

This project embraces a highly innovative approach to advancing knowledge that is collaborative, synergistic, interdisciplinary, and multi-sited.  By centering ethnography as a form of knowledge production, we move beyond narrow statistical estimates of the availability of misoprostol in hospitals and pharmacies to illuminate multiple pathways through which misoprostol is available to some consumers, patients, health workers, and health facilities, and not others.  

Into Women’s Hands/Entre Les Mains Des Femmes fosters South-South and North-South capacity building and resource sharing at the level of the university.  We center the role of national universities in Burkina Faso and Senegal in the conduct of ethnographic research and dissemination of results in academic, professional, and community arenas.  Each component of the research process occurs collaboratively, including the elaboration of project budgets, training of research assistants, the design and pretesting of research instruments, the collection and analysis of data, and the publication and presentation of results.  We meet regularly via Zoom and in person to discuss fieldwork, data analysis, and to plan next steps.  All team members have access to project documents through a virtual platform. Project investigators have access to online scholarly resources through Brandeis University Library. The project equips the investigators’ units with resources to support research such as reading material, subscriptions to academic journals, computers, and Nvivo software for data analysis.  Additionally, we advocate for the integration of research workshops and seminars into existing course offerings, and other forms of support for graduate students, beyond the life of the project.  

Our project is composed of three teams.  One of the principal investigators is located at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts and works virtually and in person with the teams in Burkina Faso and Senegal. The teams at l'Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo in Ouagadougou and l'Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar are each composed of the principal investigator and three graduate research assistants.  In both teams, one of the assistants is the designated project coordinator, and works closely with the principal investigator to administer the project. The project coordinators manage the process of research approval with national authorities, schedule and delegate fieldwork activities, and coordinate data analysis on Nvivo.