Appendix

APPENDIX: SUMMARY OF METHODOLOGY FOR IPS TSUNAMI SURVEY 2005 AND 2006

Eight districts that were most severely affected by the tsunami in the Northern, Eastern, and Southern provinces were selected for the survey. These consisted of: the Trincomalee, Batticaloa, and Ampara districts from the Eastern Province, the Jaffna and Mullaitivu districts from the Northern Province, and the Hambantota, Matara, and Galle districts from the Southern Province.

In these eight districts, Grama Niladhari Divisions (GNDs) were first identified where more than 50 per cent of houses were made unusable due to being completely or severely damaged using Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) data.

The 16 GNDs for the study were distributed across the eight districts based on the level of housing damage in each district (Table A.1 [ PDF 87.3KB | 1 page ]). Within the districts, GNDs were chosen based on socio-economic data so as to select a representative set of GNDs considering ethnicity, religion, livelihoods, and the location with respect to the 2005 buffer zone (the “no-build” zone). Socio-economic data for this purpose were obtained from the 2001 Census by the DCS for the Southern districts. Since census data did not extend to the districts in the Eastern and the Northern provinces, socio-economic information for these provinces was obtained through key informants from those areas. Key informant information was also used to select GNDs with households both within and outside the 2005 buffer zone. (Information given by key informants in this regard was not entirely accurate, and, as a result, some GNDs that were mostly within the no-build zone remained in the sample).

A sample of 45 households from the list of unusable houses for each GND was randomly selected for the household survey, with 30 households outside the no-build zone and 15 within. However, in some GNDs there were less than 30 houses outside the buffer zone. In these instances, more households from within the buffer zone were interviewed to make up the sample. The households were selected using DCS tsunami census data where available. For the two GNDs where DCS data were not available, household lists obtained from Grama Niladharis (GNs) were used as a frame.

Due to delays in obtaining access, the survey could not cover the Jaffna and Mullaitivu districts of the Northern Province. Therefore, information is available only for 14 GNDs in the Southern and Eastern provinces. Information from the selected GNDs was collected at several levels in April 2005. To obtain community-level perspectives on rebuilding, relocation, and land issues, focus groups were conducted in all GNDs. In addition, community-level information to ascertain community characteristics and information on rebuilding, relocation, and land issues was obtained through key informant interviews based on a structured questionnaire. In addition to these interviews, information on land supply in the GNDs was obtained from the relevant Divisional Secretary’s Office, also based on a structured questionnaire. The household-level interviews were conducted using a structured household questionnaire. The questionnaires were drafted in English and translated to Sinhala and Tamil for use in different GNDs.

In July 2006, an attempt was made to resurvey all the 622 households that were interviewed for the April 2005 survey with the view to gaining updated information on the progress of the reconstruction effort. The survey was designed to address issues of permanent housing paucity, recovery in livelihoods, etc., to get a clearer picture of where Sri Lanka stood in the reconstruction process one and a half years after the tsunami disaster. In addition to the housing survey, three key informant interviews in each GND were conducted. When a household could not be located, randomly selected replacement houses were surveyed from the GND. The resulting database consisted of 595 households, of which 564 were from the original 622 households.

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