Socio-economic and goat management data from smallholder surveys in Botswana
Description
The attached spreadsheet includes data from a two-stage survey of smallholder farmers in the Central District Botswana. The survey questions are also attached. The first stage is a cross-sectional survey (n = 787) which covers elements of household food security, household income sources, livestock owned, assets owned, structure of goat herds, and aspects of goat management such as off-take, mortality, veterinary treatments. The second stage is a semi-structured survey (n = 44). This was completed by a sub-section of goat owning respondents from the cross-sectional survey. This delved deeper into aspects of goat management and health. It explores more specific areas of husbandry, feeding, veterinary care, and animal health. The dataset consists of 229 columns, each pertaining to an individual question or component of a question. Some answers are redacted for anonymity.
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Data collection was approved by research permit number ENT 8/36/4 XXXX II (5) by the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism. Participation was optional and all participants gave informed consent via forms in the language of their choosing and those who had limited literacy were read the consent form in their local language. Surveys were conducted throughout November and December 2019, across the Central District of Botswana, covering 14 villages. Surveys were conducted in two stages, with a general, short but fully structured, cross-sectional survey (n = 787) followed by a more detailed semi-structured survey for a subset (n = 44) of goat smallholders. Depending on the distribution of the households, enumerators were distributed in all populated areas of the village and would start from the edge of a block of houses or settlements. Households were randomised by skipping 5 households (where households were spaced out) or ten households (where they were densely populated); then selecting the sixth or the eleventh household, respectively. Where the household head or adult family member capable of representing the head (described as the respondent in this study) was not available at the selected household, the next available was selected without further skipping. Within that process, where a respondent indicated that he/she had at least ten goats, a more detailed semi-structured questionnaire was then used. The detailed survey included additional questions on aspects of goat husbandry. Electronic tablets were used for data collection., The questionnaire was deployed using KoboCollect and responses were instantly entered and saved by enumerators. For elderly and/or less literate respondents, the questions were posed in an appropriate local language, i.e. Setswana. The surveys were designed as follows: • Demographic: Age, gender, location, educational attainment, household size. • Food & financial security: Income sources, financial freedom, concern about food, number of meals per day, and ownership of goods (e.g. car, mobile phone). • Livestock: Type and numbers of livestock owned, ranking of importance of each. • Goats: Husbandry/housing, feed supplementation, mortality, herd composition, offtake. • Additional questions (detailed survey): Contribution of goats to household income, desirable goat traits, specific health and mortality cause specifics, availability, use and affordability of veterinary medicines and services.