The Environment – under our care
https://emp.bbc.com/emp/SMPj/2.44.17/iframe.html
Uganda’s bamboo bikes: ‘A sustainable luxury’
Meet Kasoma Noordin, from Kampala in Uganda, who makes high-end bicycles with a difference.
Rather than using metal or carbon, he makes his frames from a naturally strong and lightweight material that he grows himself: bamboo.
BBC Smart Money went to meet him.
Video producers: Jason Dunford and Jewel Kiriungi
According to USAID research standards, quality data must exhibit five key attributes, V-TRIP; i.e. Validity, Timeliness, Reliability, Integrity and Precision.
Valid data is data that shows a true representation of the measure of interest (indicator), and its changes can credibly be associated with the interventions in question. It should be free of sampling and non-sampling errors. The validity of data is achieved by developing proper data collection tools and their subsequent effective use during the data collection exercise. Soon after the exercise, the integrity of the data in question must be protected, and this is often linked to the capabilities of the management system in place to reduce the possibility of introducing bias either by transcription error or deliberate manipulation during data entry and cleaning.
In reality though, isnāt this just idealism? During a data collection exercise, there are usually many factors in play that may hinder the collection of valid data. Therefore, what follows data collection is often putting in hard work on preserving the integrity of invalid data.
The challenge does not start at the field but from the planning of a research exercise, and most of it has to do with time. There are key areas that are associated with the issue of time that must be dealt with precisely to avoid these ātime-bottlenecksā. I conducted a mini-research for purposes of getting opinions and experiences (basically qualitative in nature) from fellow researchers and here are some of the concerns raised:-
1. Training period. Proper planning ultimately determines the level of success of any given project. Therefore, it is advisable to spend as much time as needed to prepare, so that on execution every possible angle of challenges and risks will have been mitigated or prepared for. Training of enumerators is part of planning. Spending only a day on training enumerators who are going to carry out a seven day survey only to end up getting 50% of the responses wrong doesn’t make sense. Wouldnāt it be wiser to spend two days on training and increase the precision and validity of collected data to 90%? Release enumerators to the field only when you are sure they will bring you, not good but excellent data.
2. Data collection period. A questionnaire that takes an hour during a mock survey in the training venue will not take the same amount of time in the field. It will take probably a half an hour more. Therefore it is not logical to expect an enumerator to bring back eight questionnaires at the end of the day. The plan must consider sampling method used and time of travel to access target participants. All these are about TIME. If you give unreasonable targets the enumerator will use unethical means (compromised integrity) to reach the target and the result will most likely affect the validity of the data.
3. Sample size versus daily target. Often, the aspect of bias and assumption among enumerators comes in when they have had to ask the same questions over and over and keep getting the same answers. By the time they are administering the one-hour-long, fifth questionnaire of the day they have basically switched to āauto-drive-modeā. What they do is to assume responses to some questions will be similar to what they got before and therefore they do not pose these questions to the respondent but fill in the assumed response. This is also reported to happen whenever respondents look unsettled, seem to be in a rush or when the enumerator is tired, feels like they are far from reaching set daily target or are running out of time as the day concludes.
Is it possible to deal with these ātime bottlenecksā to beat the issue of validity and integrity at the level of data collection?
Several suggestions were put across but there was no single standing solution. The suggested approaches must be combined to move from 90% that can be achieved with proper planning, to 98%. First of all sufficient time must be allocated and used in the planning phase. Train, carry out mock-survey, re-train, pre-test with a sample of targeted respondents then re-train. Ask questions and engage trainees. It helps in gauging their level of understanding of the tool, their confidence on the tool and their level of preparation to undertake the exercise. Do not depend on getting phone calls to clarify issues for enumerators after deployment to field. Network reception may be terrible or something else may render it impossible to communicate, then enumerators will make-do with guesswork. Attain an excellent mark before deployment.
Secondly, allocate sufficient time for the survey. Donāt give unreasonable targets because enumerators will hit the target but will deliver invalid data. It was also suggested that sound recording would be a great tool for confirming validity.
I sat down to write about a captivating new book by Jonathan Drori, Around the World in 80 Trees.
So much for good intentions; I was endlessly diverted into exploring the use of timber to pave roads and the horror of urushi tea drinking by Sokushinbutsu monks in Japan, but more of those later.
Jonathan Drori has used plant science to map out the interaction of trees with human life, in a riveting world tour. Exploring, on his itinerary, trees as sources of medicines and trees as a source of poisons, trees as a building material and trees as a food source, the whole constitutes 240 pages of beautifully illustrated fascination.
It would be very natural to start wondering which 80 trees you would choose to accomplish a round world tour. I was pleased to see the Strawberry Tree 
(Arbutus unedo) in there. It has always fascinated me that it is classified in the family Ericaceae, the heathers. My example has travelled with me since 1976, but is now too big to move again; no longer an evergreen shrub, but a tree.
There are choices of trees with which many will agree. The rowan (I love rowan jelly),
date and pomegranate. Then the reader will have a surprise with leylandii, the love-hate tree of England.
But what about this road paving? It seems that in the 1890s, many roads in London and other cities were surfaced with wood. Less important streets were surfaced with Swedish deal blocks. I leave the effect of horse urine on the absorbant surfaces in warm weather to your imagination. Smarter roads would be paved with Jarrah and Karri Eucalyptus hardwoods from Australia.
And lastly, the urushi tea drinkers reveal an horrific story. Turning to the pages featuring the Chinese lacquer tree (Toxicodendron vernicifluum), 
we learn about its introduction into Japan around 5,000 years ago and its use in the lacquering process. The sinister side lies with the sokushinbutsu (å³čŗ«ä»), which are a kind of Buddhist mummy. Becoming a sokushinbutsu (a Buddha in this very body) refers to the practice of Buddhist monks observing asceticism to the point of death and entering mummification while still barely alive. After a very prolonged period of fasting, the monks are said to have started drinking urishiol tea. Apart from being highly toxic, it could be suggested that they were varnishing themselves from the inside out. 16 extant sokushibutsu are currently known of in Japan.
If tales of the Chinese lacquer tree disturb you, you can always stick to the delicious fig tree and date palm pages.
First stop might be your friendly, local independent bookseller or direct from the UK publishers (laurenceking.com).
Elsewhere, this book can be found at Ā Amazon
Once you have your copy, do not lend it should you want it returned to you.
Jonathan Drori is a Trustee of the Woodland Trust and of the Eden Project. He is an ambassador for WWF and was for nine years a trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society and of the Zoological Society of London, and is also a Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. In 2006 he was made a CBE.
Lucille Clerc turns out to be an inspired choice for the illustrator of this book. Many writers and publishers might have turned to a classical botanical artist, but this book is so much more than a botanical tome. The illustrations all have a human touch and relevance, underlining the tree-human relationship explored in this book.
Mlle Clerc is a French illustrator and graphic designer, whose studio is in Dalston, London, just a mile from my old house. She set up her studio after graduating from Central Saint Martins with an MA in Communication Design. A lot of her personal work is inspired by Londonās architecture and the relationship between Nature and urbanisation. In the past five years she has studied green spaces, both in the cities of London and Paris. If you have enjoyed her illustrations you will find a shop at her website:Ā https://www.lucilleclerc.com