Focus

Socio-economic studies are usually required so that the local dynamics and development situation of communities are fully understood. These circumstances are important in determining the need and demand for a wide range of planning issues, services, infrastructure as well as the underlying rationale for feasibility indicators for projects.

Methods

Urban-Econ has the appropriate expertise to apply a variety of methods and tools to obtain these socio-economic indicators and profiles of communities through direct or direct interaction, including:

• Personal face-to-face interviews/surveys
• Telephone interviews/surveys
• Focus group discussions
• Workshops and work sessions
• Indabas and summits.

Approach

Urban-Econ has a three-fold approach to Socio-economic Studies which incorporates the development of a suitable data collection methodology, the data collection and cleaning process and lastly the interpretation and detailed analysis of the data.

Urban-Econ utilises locally recruited fieldworkers from the local communities where possible and in this way ploughs skills capacity (through training) and injections (through wages) back into the local community. This ensures local commitment, interest and buy-in into the project and invariably increases the quality of the interview results.

Urban-Econ’s pool of highly skilled Field Managers is deployed on a project basis to ensure fieldwork coordination and quality control, which ensures consistency and a high standard of work.