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The use of students in surveying susbistence fisheries - a Pacific island case study.

Year of publication 2000

Pages 104 p.

Author Hosch, G.;Fishery and Aquaculture Economics and Policy Division

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Book (series)

Series title FAO Fisheries Circular

Series number 0429-9329|2070-6065|0429-9337 - C962

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) This study tests the quality of subsistence fishery data returned by students in a field trial of a student census. 112 fourteen to eighteen year old students from one rural school on Upolus East Coast, Samoa, participated in the study. The students were all drawn from the second and third but last classes of the Samoan secondary education system (years 11and 12). Students were given a logbook containing one questionnaire on household specifics (socio-economic data), and seven daily log sheets, into which household seafood consumption, and fishing trip and catch specifics were recorded. Students recorded information for one week in the last full calendar week of August 1999. A household survey and a creel census were carried out in parallel, to serve as validating surveys, against which the data collected by the students were compared. It was found that there was weak overlap between socio-economic data collected by the students and data collected by the validating surveys, with studen ts reporting generally inflated values across the range of items sampled. It appears that this was not due to poor performance of students recording the information, but is likely to be due to the fact that the selected age group in this study does not embody a representative cross-section of the rural community (specifically in terms of household economics). Only 29 % of the logbook sections recording daily fishing activity (catch and trip information) were answered satisfactorily. This was in part attributed to the complexity of the daily log sheets and the length of the exercise. The pool of logbooks which had been completed satisfactorily however, yielded good results which closely matched indicators rendered by the validating surveys.

Cite this content as:

Hosch, G. The use of students in surveying subsistence fisheries. A Pacific island case study. FAO Fisheries Circular. No. 962. Rome, FAO. 2000. 104p.

Language English

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