Community Perspectives on Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene in Northwestern Tanzania: Insights from One Health Research in the Gombe-Masito-Ugalla Ecosystem Restricted; Files Only
King, Lydia (Spring 2025)
Abstract
Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) improvements are central to health initiatives globally, but successful implementation requires approaches tailored to the unique needs of specific communities. This thesis examines WASH perspectives in rural communities surrounding Gombe National Park, Tanzania, using qualitative and text-mining analyses of data from a Mixed Methods Assessment of One Health in the Gombe-Masito-Ugalla Ecosystem (GMUE). In this thesis, I study data from focus groups and health provider interviews using both qualitative analysis and text mining, with a special focus on the role of translation. I explore how community members analyze and communicate knowledge on WASH practices, first identifying local explanatory models for WASH practices centered around disease models and gender frameworks. Key findings indicate that community members draw a connection between disease prevention and the effects of food hygiene and water cleanliness. Zoonotic disease transmission, while still mentioned, was not as central to focus group discussions specifically about WASH. Furthermore, respondents connected WASH practices to gendered understandings of labor and resource access, but they also emphasized a lack of infrastructure and supplies. Then, I examine how WASH knowledge is negotiated within and from these communities, examining assessments of water quality and the effects of translation. Community members described conflicting perspectives on who had the ability to determine water quality and sustain water treatment, showing a contrast between locally and externally situated knowledge systems. This contrast between knowledge sources was reflected by an examination of translation discrepancies, which highlighted meaning shifts and their effect on qualitative analysis. I end by arguing that the cross-cultural study of WASH requires a focus on translation: whether the translation of meaning within one community and language, or the translation of ideas from one language to another. Because of this, WASH study designs should take into account the process of translation and its effects on research takeaways.
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Introduction 1
Opening Words 1
Statement of positionality 2
Project Overview 3
Data Structure 4
Thesis statement 5
Research Questions 5
Chapter Two: Background 7
Introduction to WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) 7
The One Health Approach 9
One Health in Tanzania 10
Applying anthropological methods in public health efforts 13
Anthropological methodology for analyzing community interviews 15
Towards an integrated approach to interview analysis: when qualitative methodology meets quantitative 15
Chapter Three: Methodology 20
Ethical Approval 20
Data Collection 20
Coding and preliminary analysis 23
Intercoder reliability analysis 25
Translation analysis 27
Refining codes 30
Text mining using Tidytext 31
Chapter Four: WASH as it relates to perceptions of illness 33
Personal hygiene and disease transmission 34
Efficacy of hand washing 34
WASH and food hygiene 37
Sanitation and illness 46
Chapter Five: WASH and Gender 52
Hand washing and women’s roles 52
Latrine usage and relationship to gender and resources 54
Open defecation and other social roles 57
Gender and water access 59
Chapter Six: Water Attitudes 64
Water quality assessments 64
Perceptions of water treatment 67
Chapter Seven: On Translation 70
Seeking further insight into the translation process 70
Translating “local beliefs” 71
Translating descriptions of westerners 75
Further meaning shifts during translation 76
Parallel corpora analysis and its limitations 77
Chapter Eight: Conclusion 80
Future recommendations 80
Works Cited 83
Appendix 90
About this Honors Thesis
| School | |
|---|---|
| Department | |
| Degree | |
| Submission | |
| Language |
|
| Research Field | |
| Keyword | |
| Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor | |
| Committee Members |
Primary PDF
| Thumbnail | Title | Date Uploaded | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
File download under embargo until 22 May 2027 | 2025-04-09 02:33:36 -0400 | File download under embargo until 22 May 2027 |
Supplemental Files
| Thumbnail | Title | Date Uploaded | Actions |
|---|