Data used in this research was collected using two approaches both with significant relevance. I acquired primary data from using interviews. Rigorous and extensive review of the existing literature was used to get the secondary data.
➢ Interviews
A total of twenty respondents were interviewed using open-ended interview guides, one on one interviews were conducted to produce the primary data. In the survey, I relied on semi-structured interview with open-ended questions. The interview guide was divided into two components. The first part included the respondents’ background information and the second part a set of questions which the respondent was to address. Important to note, different but a closely related set of questions were provided for each category of respondents, that is the lecturers had different questions addressing different issues from
the students and vice versa. As the interview proceeded, I took notes on the respondent’s body language and other relevant observations in the surrounding.
These notes were used in the analysis stage and provided a valuable resource for strengthening the finding’s internal validity. Thorought the interviews, I used a voice recorder which helped to capture all the responses without having to write on a timely basis and instead focus on the tone, flow, and depth of the research. After the interview, I documented the respondent’s general considerations and feelings of the interview. The interviews sought to capture the daily realities of how different people perceive education and youth unemployment in Mbale district. These interviews lasted between thirty to sixty minutes.
The importance of conducting interviews cannot be emphasized enough. To show this importance, DiCicco-Bloom and Crabtree state that “While all interviews are used to get to know the interviewee better, the purpose of that ‘knowing’ varies according to the research question and the disciplinary perspective of the researcher” and that in research, the importance of conducting interviews is to “contribute to a body of knowledge that is conceptual and theoretical and is based on the meanings that life experiences hold for the interviewees” (DiCicco-Bloom & Crabtree, 2006: 315)
➢ Analysis of Existing Literature
To generate secondary data, which plays an important role in this research, I relied on existing literature and official documents. Literature analysis refers to the systematic evaluation and review of electronic and printed documents (Bowen, 2009: 27). This approach has been supported by scholars such as Merriam (1988) who argues that researchers particularly those in the cross-cultural field have no alternative than to examine existing literature. Similar sentiments have been raised by Bowen (2009) who adds that researchers can rely on existing literature and incorporate the findings into their research.
Therefore, I was able to improve my understanding of existing arguments on youth unemployment in Uganda and how it is affected by the education system. This prior knowledge came in handy in my fieldwork as I already had a glimpse of the existing narratives. Documents used to generate secondary data include academic articles and
books, government surveys and reports, fact sheets, newspapers, statistics by local and international agencies, online publications, thesis, and census reports. The information available on these documents helped not only to contextualize the research questions, it also helped to open up the historical aspects of the research topic as well as useful data that would have otherwise been very difficult to generate.
Apart from helping to generate secondary data, document analysis is crucial in the verification and generation of findings in this research. Single study approaches are vulnerable to biases, and therefore I opted to not depend solely on interviews but use existing literature to verify the findings of the primary data. Some scholars contend that researchers may face accusations of their findings being artifacts of single sourcing and thus recommend triangulation to overcome any such possibilities (Patton 1990, in Bowen (2009: 28). Of course, in some cases, existing literature may contradict the findings of the research being conducted and, in this case, there is a need for further research to determine where the diversion emanate. However, in this research, there is a consensus between the findings from the literature and the interviews conducted. This shows that the findings in this thesis have also been observed by other scholars and there is a need for relevant authorities to use them in finding a lasting solution to the problem of youth unemployment. I did not come across any major contradiction between this research and the existing literature. However, that does not mean that there are no documents that may have different findings on this or similar topic.
Another important observation is that majority of the literature did not directly relate or address the same research question as this thesis, however, the information these documents provided were of great importance. They did offer a valuable information on the nature, status, statistics, and impact of youth unemployment and education in Uganda as captured in the background of this thesis. In sum, document analysis provided critical additional questions worth examining, a means of tracking how the challenge of youth unemployment and education in Uganda have changed over the years, supplementary data and a platform on which other data sources can be verified.
➢ Observation
Observation is similar to visual and insight data collection techniques and involves obtaining information from non -verbal and behavioral elements. In this thesis, I was able to collect valuable information by observing the behavior, environment and working environment during my field study in Mbale district. This approach was fruitful as most of the time I was constantly on the move within the district and this enabled me to assess the situation of youths, working behavior,and status of different enterprises in the region.