From January to February 2008 a qualitative pre-study was carried out in the Wakame region of Kafue district in Zambia. The objectives of the qualitative pre-study were to establish an overview of the communities’ challenges and needs, to test certain core concepts like daily stressors, depression and health issues against the local context and to examine the comparability of the villages within the study site.
A multi-method approach was used by triangulating information from different respondent groups, as well as asking about the same thing through different methods. Respondent groups consisted on one side of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and on the other side of knowledgeable
community members i.e. people who are in close contact with children in their everyday lives such as teachers (KCM).
Data was gathered with various qualitative methods: Participatory Mapping (PM), Focus Group Discussions (FGD), Free Listings (FL), Pile Sorting (PS) and Key Informant Interviews (KII). The qualitative pre-study also served as an entry point to introduce the research project to the communities and to obtain consent. The findings from the qualitative pre-study were used to adapt the quantitative questionnaire.