Various recent sanitation sources and resources were used by Leonie Kappauf in her research study Opportunities and constraints for more sustainable sanitation through sanitation marketing in Malawi, Case study from Mzimba and Lilongwe districts, for her Master of Science research at Lougborough Universitity, WEDC, UK.
Published on: 18/10/2011
Various recent sanitation sources and resources were used by Leonie Kappauf in her research study Opportunities and constraints for more sustainable sanitation through sanitation marketing in Malawi, Case study from Mzimba and Lilongwe districts, for her MsC research at WEDC, UK.
For her literature review she used the IRC’s WASH Library database as one of her five search resources to narrow literature gaps from her first precise and targeted scholarly databases searches. The author also subscribed to the Sanitation Updates and the IRC Web Link notifications. As an example, the newspaper articles about the launch of the sanitation marketing campaign in peri-urban Lilongwe and Blantyre (Ngozo, 2011; Chibaya, 2011) were obtained after receiving email notifications.
A Source Bulletin article, a Waterlines article and one other report on sanitation marketing in Vietnam were her other IRC sources she used.
The author provides a good example of literature review methodology. In her initial first phase in obtaining literature used very precise and targeted search words and terms, focusing on databases that were thought to be most balanced, such as the University Library Catalogue, MetaLib, the WEDC Resource Centre and Google Scholar. Some Malawi specific documents were provided from Engineers Without Borders (EWB0) Canada. This helped to Identify if and/or to what degree Sanitation Marketing is currently implemented in Malawi.
The obtained documents and articles were reviewed and literature gaps were identified. Consequently, in a second phase, the research was widened by broadening the used research terms but also by using additional databases and search mechanisms such as the WSP website, the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) website, the database of the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) and the Community‐led Total sanitation webpage and general Google search. A snowball approach was then applied to gather more literature and to deepen the understanding of specific issues that were merely raised by one author but more deeply researched by another. Therefore the in‐text references and bibliographies of the publications were used as a starting point for a follow-up research. Especially in journal articles or short context notes, which briefly summarize information, this approach opened up a vast source of in-depth information. The same approach was then replicated when reviewing the newly found articles, which led again to new resources. Comparing bibliographies and references also gave an idea of frequently cited key documents for the different topics and thus some quality indication.
Subscriptions to email based notification services for newly published articles and documents in the WASH sector were useful in obtaining very recent sources. The author subscribed to the Sanitation Updates newsletter and the IRC Web Link notifications. As an example, the newspaper articles about the launch of the sanitation marketing campaign in peri-urban Lilongwe and Blantyre (Ngozo, 2011; Chibaya, 2011) were obtained after receiving email notifications.
In order to keep a good overview and organization of the reviewed or scanned sources, the articles were classified after scanning in a relevance rating scheme using Roman figures between I and V. Literature rated with I was thought to be only very peripherally relevant whereas key documents were rated with V. For record keeping these classifications were noted on print‐out documents; electronic documents were saved in respective folders.
Devine and Sijbesma (2011), Sustainability of rural sanitation marketing in Vietnam: findings from a new case study. Waterlines, 30, (1), pp. 52-60
Krukkert, I. Vietnam: Highlights from Rural Sanitation Supply Chain and Finance Workshop. In: IRC website [online]. http://www.irc.nl/, 2011 [viewed 09 June 2011] Available from: http://www.source.irc.nl/page/63644
SNV and IRC (2011), Report Rural Sanitation Supply Chains and Finance Workshop, Dien Bien Province, 16-21 January 2011, http://www.irc.nl/page/65169
Source: Kappauf, Leonie (2011) Opportunities and constraints for more sustainable sanitation through sanitation marketing in Malawi, Case study from Mzimba and Lilongwe districts, MsC research report, WEDC, UK
