Given that one of the aims of the SGBV project was to consider what digital tools interventions could be useful in this space, our survey sought to understand capacity within the target communities. Beyond simply ascertaining the presence of phones or smart phones, given the nature of intervention we sought, it was important to consider nuances within capacity. For our survey, it was important to not only understand how many women had access to phones and smartphones, but whether they had sole access to these devices, whether they accessed the internet and what was their pattern of use for their phones. Further, were respondents aware of digital applications and what types of such applications they had used?

Surveying digital capacities and the need for a tool to assist survivors of SGBV necessitated feedback to ensure the app contained features that were sensitive to their needs and requirements: language, privacy, audio playback and illustrations for low-literacy users, an easy to navigate interface for those with low digital-literacy, among others.

To ease the interviewee into the schedule we divided the questionnaire into different parts, created as a mix of both open-ended and close-ended questions. The sections included:

• Personal Information;

• Documentation;

• Awareness of SGBV;

• Awareness of SGBV support structures and knowledge of experiences with them;

• Digital Capacity and Desirability of Digital solutions.

The first section involved the collection of demographic information to build the profile of our respondents. In using different demographic metrics as a variable allowed us to reach different conclusions on the relationship between gender, literacy levels, employment status, age or other such metrics and knowledge of SGBV and SGBV support structures. The idea behind understanding these relationships was also important to the scope and design of the SGBV project and how we could possibly tailor our proposed solutions to have better reach and more impact.

While the need for sections on awareness of SGBV and related support structures is fairly obvious, it was important to consider not only respondents’ awareness at a basic level but gauge whether they would access any of these laws, institutions or support structures, and if they had any prior experience with them.

Equally, it was important to understand whether respondents looked on these laws, institutions and structures as potentially helpful and to understand from them what impediments exist for engagement with them.

Reaching out our Potential Respondents

Once the survey schedule was ready, the next step involved going into the identified settlements and speaking to community members. As mentioned earlier, all respondents were assured of confidentiality before the interview began.

The reasoning highlighted above would have meant little without adequate and considered engagement from members of our target communities. While we were dependent on the willingness of respondents, as a team conducting the survey we had to account for the difficult in getting individual respondents to speak to SGBV related issues.

Overcoming reluctance across communities to address SGBV issues was a challenging task that necessitated the use of various rapport building strategies to convince respondents that our survey would not only be in service of trying to improve SGBV related institutions across these communities but that we would protect the privacy and confidentiality of respondents. Further, particularly when speaking to survivors or respondents that knew survivors, we had to engage with empathy as well as with a desire to understand the experiences that survivors of SGBV have had in target communities.

Conducting a Survey in a Pandemic

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were compelled to conduct a portion of our survey over the phone and not in-person. This presented a whole different set of challenges to rapport building as we had to convince respondents not only of the legitimacy of such a sensitive and personal survey but that of the organisation being one that was working in earnest to resolve SGBV related issues in target communities. Undoubtedly, engaging with respondents on SGBV issues and eliciting useful and detailed responses was made much harder in the pandemic. Not all respondents were equally forthcoming and many were reluctant to delve into details. Several were averse to acknowledging knowledge of SGBV incidents in their communities.

Since our target communities also included forcibly displaced migrants, we had to tailor our approaches to each of these communities. We had to ensure that we left plenty of room to ask follow-up questions, if naturally flowing in the conversation, so that we didn't miss out any crucial information.