Let's take a look at the lives of typical rural Indian women and understand what social norms and practices prevent them from achieving economic advancement. Our understanding will help unveil major barriers to women's participation in upskilling and employment generation programs offered by a leading local NGO- The Light of Life Trust (LOLT).We will identify ways in which LOLT can address these barriers and increase women's enrollment in its program as well as their successful transition to employment after completion of the program. This will help women fulfill their foremost aspiration of achieving greater financial security!
In countries such as India, where about 70% of the people live in rural areas, the rural market holds a lot of marketing potential. There is a wide difference in the standard of living between urban and rural India. In order to launch products in the rural market and develop advertising that reflects the rural ethos, there is a need to understand both the rural context and consumer. This paper details how a social research technique known as the participatory rural appraisal (PRA) was adapted to commercial research and used along with conventional focus groups to yield rich data for marketing and communication development.
Local government is going through a period of considerable change in a number of European countries, including France and Britain, as the nature of central-local relations changes. While Britain is centralising power and decision-making, France is devolving these away from Paris. In both countries, however, effective resource management and improving the quality of local public services are high on the agenda of local authorities. There is growing recognition that now, more than ever before, local government needs to know about customer attitudes and expectations. Local authorities are coming increasingly to recognise the practical role survey research can play in monitoring service delivery, in responding to the opinions of both users and non-users of services, and in improving customer care. This paper explores recent research conducted for local authorities in Britain and France. Case histories are used to illustrate the ways in which research is providing a reliable tool for decision-making in both countries. The paper focuses on the use made of survey data by clients keen to respond to changing local needs, with particular reference to the problems facing rural areas, which are not always recognised by central government. The paper demonstrates how research has provided a springboard for action, and provided cost-effective guidance to local planners and policy-makers in both France and Britain.
This paper shows how a market research study in rural India designed essentially to develop communication for India's National Diarrhoea Management Programme, resulted in shaping the programme strategy. Diarrhoea is a major cause of child mortality in India responsible for approximately 1.5 million childhood deaths each year. These deaths are largely preventible through Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) which involves continual administration of any of a wide range of fluids most of which can be made at home. The simplest of these is a solution of sugar, salt and water. The effective management of diarrhoea in the home therefore needs to be taught to every mother. The objective of the study was to understand current knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) regarding diarrhoea among mothers in order to obtain baseline information for designing a communications strategy. This understanding was necessary at the level of each administrative-political state as well as on a national basis. The study was designed in two-stages. The first stage was exploratory and sought to understand the range of knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding diarrhoea across the country. The second stage was designed to quantify data that was considered important for the design of the programme and its communications strategy. 168 focus group discussions, 453 tape recorded in-depth interviews and 5310 personal interviews based on a structured questionnaire provided the data base.
This paper will trace the development of cable television in the U.S. from its early development for better TV reception in rural or remote areas, to the use of communication satellites to deliver programming across the entire country. We wiI I examine the dynamic growth of pay-TV and advertiser- supported cable, the fragmentation of TV audiences, and a major agency's (Ted Bates) approach to using this new medium.
Past studies have attempted the effect of various factors on the accuracy of opinion polls. In the area of pre-election poll alone researchers have studied the effects of question order (Crespi and Morris, 1984), late trend in voter preference (Day and Becker, 1984), disproportionate voter turn-out (Day and Becker, 1984), biasing pressures (Hennessy and Hennessy, 1961) and structural constraints (Shamir, 1986) on the accuracy of polls. This article attempts to study the effect of 'Rural' component on pre-election polls. In a country like India where nearly 80% of the population live in rural villages, it is very important to study the predictive ability of pre-election polls in rural areas as compared to that in urban areas.
The original intention of "Coisas da Roga" (Country days) was to have a better understanding of the relationship between rural people in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo - "country folks", as- they call theirselves - and the big city consumer society. Particular attention was given to one of this relationship' s vital manifestations; television as, a medium, and television commercials. By using a descriptive and exploratory method to approach a theme and a population not yet researched in Brazil, new elements arose regarding social changes caused by television as an agent of innovation.
Market studies done in a rural environment do not seem to present any particular methodological problems when the persons interviewed are "modern" i. e. culturally urbanised farmers who direct large modern farms, have mental attitudes comparable to those of an industrial entrepreneur or an urban consumer. But, there still exist in Europe, and particularly in France, rural populations which have been little permeated by the industrial and urban type of society. From a social psychological point of view, these farmers are still representative of traditional peasant societies. Their upbringing has, in large part, been determined by the specific conditions of the local community; their values, their cultural models, their ways of thought - the very nature of their intellectual processes are at variance with urban values, models, and types of reasoning. Therefore, the "peasant" tends to perceive the interviewer, who comes to ask him questions, as a "gentleman from town", a representative of the global society, and tends to react to his questions by playing the role of the peasant. His responses to a questionnaire may thus be over-accentuated by the characteristics of the interviewing situation and they may finally prove to be of little significance. The opinion questionnaire, itself, may appear as an instrument of investigation thoroughly inappropriate for certain categories of persons interviewed. Having been in a position over the last ten years to utilize various methods of research within and action on a rural environment, the author attempts to compare the advantages and disadvantages of these methods for the knowledge of "peasant" behaviour. Market studies in French rural areas have developed greatly over the last ten years. At the same time, research in rural sociology and economics, and efforts to compose more valid agricultural statistics are bringing a greater volume of useful information to specialists of surveys. But this field still poses numerous problems to those who work in it. We will try, in this paper, to discuss several of these problems.
Market studies done in a rural environment do not seem to present any particular methodological problems when the persons interviewed are "modern" i. e. culturally urbanised farmers who direct large modern farms, have mental attitudes comparable to those of an industrial entrepreneur or an urban consumer. But, there still exist in Europe, and particularly in France, rural populations which have been little permeated by the industrial and urban type of society. From a social psychological point of view, these farmers are still representative of traditional peasant societies. Their upbringing has, in large part, been determined by the specific conditions of the local community; their values, their cultural models, their ways of thought - the very nature of their intellectual processes are at variance with urban values, models, and types of reasoning. Therefore, the "peasant" tends to perceive the interviewer, who comes to ask him questions, as a "gentleman from town", a representative of the global society, and tends to react to his questions by playing the role of the peasant. His responses to a questionnaire may thus be over-accentuated by the characteristics of the interviewing situation and they may finally prove to be of little significance. The opinion questionnaire, itself, may appear as an instrument of investigation thoroughly inappropriate for certain categories of persons interviewed. Having been in a position over the last ten years to utilize various methods of research within and action on a rural environment, the author attempts to compare the advantages and disadvantages of these methods for the knowledge of "peasant" behaviour. Market studies in French rural areas have developed greatly over the last ten years. At the same time, research in rural sociology and economics, and efforts to compose more valid agricultural statistics are bringing a greater volume of useful information to specialists of surveys. But this field still poses numerous problems to those who work in it. We will try, in this paper, to discuss several of these problems.