Abstract
This chapter describes the methodology and data sources used in producing this book. The study employed three levels of analysis: a macro-level of cross-country comparisons; a meso-level of studying the organisations and informal entities of civil society; and a micro-level of individual values, attitudes and activities related to civil society. We used four main methods of data collection and analysis: secondary data analysis (focusing on available public opinion surveys), an organisational survey of Armenian NGOs, case studies of activism campaigns and qualitative interviews and focus group discussions with civil society members. Our discussion of “Googling” as a method of creating a sampling frame for civil society organisations might be particularly relevant for scholars working in countries where there are no reliable lists from which to sample.
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Notes
- 1.
Strictly speaking, a case study is not a method but a collection of various methods that allow in-depth exploration of a case. For the sake of the clarity and readability of the chapter, we group the various methods that we employed while studying activism campaigns under one “general method” and explain the relevant details in the corresponding sections. There is also some overlap between the case studies and the qualitative data, but since each has a distinct role to play in our analysis and must be explained separately from the perspective of methodology, we discuss them separately.
- 2.
Counterpart International Armenia recently phased out its operations in Armenia. By the time of the publication of this research, the databases might no longer be directly available from Counterpart. They can be requested from the Turpanjian Center for Policy Analysis at the American University of Armenia because they are considered to be in the public domain, and the authors of this research have the official permission of Counterpart to further disseminate the databases.
- 3.
See the Appendix for the organisational survey questionnaire.
- 4.
A decision was made to focus on NGOs and to exclude foundations because, according to Armenian legislation, foundations are judicial entities of a different type.
- 5.
One of the slogans of the twenty-first century is “if it is not online, it does not exist”. Our use of Googling as an assessment technique was, to some extent, inspired by this slogan.
- 6.
The person who answered the phone claimed to know nothing about the NGO.
- 7.
See the Appendix for the list of the types of organisations represented by the interviewees.
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Paturyan, Y., Gevorgyan, V. (2021). Methodology of the Study. In: Armenian Civil Society. Societies and Political Orders in Transition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63226-7_3
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