YOU ARE HERE:
Type of assessment tools
As already noted, the semi-structured interview format of the Bangladesh assessments covered a wide range of topics exploring many aspects of community life. In Sri Lanka and Cambodia, PRA methods were valuable in stimulating discussion of the local setting. Mapping was used in Sri Lanka to identify places of risk and resources in the community. While, in Cambodia, the same technique was used to look at what people liked about their community and what they wanted to change, as a way into discussing the problems they perceived as most important to them.
Lifelines and trend diagrams were used to discuss the history of individuals and communities. In Sri Lanka, NGOs identified some sexual health trends, such as the number of unwanted pregnancies, and asked communities to plot these trends in the recent past and to discuss reasons for the trend. NGOs in Cambodia asked communities themselves which trends they considered most relevant to the HIV epidemic, and similarly asked them to plot and discuss them.
Activity charts and seasonal diagrams were useful in illustrating both times of greater and lesser risk and the best times for NGOs to work with communities. The Sevalanka Foundation in Sri Lanka noted from the seasonal diagram produced by their target community that: “Villagers had money with them in the period July to August as it was harvest time. As such there was increased illicit sexual liaisons (visits to prostitutes) during this period.” Similarly, many of the seasonality diagrams from Cambodia clarify the links between work, income, festivals and sexual vulnerability. They also highlight the problems of access that the NGO will have to certain groups at certain times of year, for example, as a result of the seasonal out-migration of men for work.
Causal flow charts and ranking exercises helped to clarify the significant links between social norms and behaviour. Dividing their communities into groups by gender, age and marital status, NGOs in Cambodia asked each group to identify the ways in which a person in that group could protect themselves from HIV infection and then to rank these according to their degree of difficulty. Taking the most difficult, each group was then asked to list the causes and effects of this difficulty. In many cases, these exercises highlighted the links between low levels of condom use and perceptions and definitions of sexual pleasure, as something that is principally (if not entirely) by and for men. They suggest that a key factor defining vulnerability to HIV infection within Cambodia is the very different norms and values for men and women about sex.