A Mixed Methods Exploration of the Role of Participation in a Nutrition-Sensitive Agroecology Intervention in Rural Tanzania

Marianne Victoria Santoso; Halle Claire Petrie; Rachel Bezner Kerr; Charlotte Lane; Neema Kassim; Haikael Martin; Elias Mtinda; Esther Lupafya; Sera Young

doi:10.1016/j.cdnut.2023.100098

A Mixed Methods Exploration of the Role of Participation in a Nutrition-Sensitive Agroecology Intervention in Rural Tanzania

Curr Dev Nutr. 2023 May 13;7(6):100098. doi: 10.1016/j.cdnut.2023.100098. eCollection 2023 Jun.

Authors

Marianne Victoria Santoso¹, Halle Claire Petrie¹, Rachel Bezner Kerr², Charlotte Lane³, Neema Kassim⁴, Haikael Martin⁴, Elias Mtinda⁵, Esther Lupafya⁶, Sera Young^{1

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States.
² Department of Global Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States.
³ International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, Washington, DC, United States.
⁴ Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, Arusha, Tanzania.
⁵ Action Aid Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
⁶ Soils, Food and Healthy Communities (SFHC), Ekwendeni, Malawi.
⁷ Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States.

Abstract

Background: Participation is key to the successful implementation of nutrition-related interventions, but it has been relatively overlooked.

Objective: We sought to describe participation intensity among smallholder farmers in a randomized nutrition-sensitive agroecology study in rural Tanzania. We explored the association between baseline characteristics and overall participation intensity (quantitatively at the individual level and qualitatively at the group level), the association of participation intensity with 2 process indicators, and the association between participation intensity and key study outcomes.

Methods: Data came from 7 rounds of surveys with 295 women and 267 men across 29 months and 2 rounds of semi-structured interviews with the 20 "mentor farmers" who delivered the intervention. Participation intensity was based on the number of months of attendance at village-level project meetings or household visits (range: 0-29). Multivariable models of participation were built.

Results: Women and men participated for 17.5 ± 7.2 and 13.6 ± 8.3 months, respectively. Participation intensity followed 1 latent trajectory: initially low, with a sharp increase after month 7, and plateaued after the first year. At baseline, higher participation intensity was associated with older age, higher education, level of women's empowerment, being in the middle quintile of wealth, and qualitatively, village residence. Higher participation intensity was associated with 2 process indicators - better recall of topics discussed during meetings and greater knowledge about key agroecological methods. High participation intensity was positively associated with increased use of sustainable agricultural practices among all participants, and among women, with husband's involvement in household tasks and child's dietary diversity score.

Conclusions: Participation intensity covaried with key study outcomes, suggesting the value of increased attention to implementation in nutrition-related programs for providing insights into drivers of impact. We hope that investigations of participation, including participation intensity, will become more widespread so that intervention impacts, or lack thereof, can be better understood.

Keywords: agroecology; implementation science; nutrition-sensitive agriculture; participation; participation intensity; process evaluation; smallholder farmer.