Exploring sanitation: participatory research design and ethnography in West Bengal

This chapter describes the use of a participatory and ethnographic approach to explore a sanitation campaign in the Nadia District of West Bengal. The research took place from late 2015 until mid-2016, around a year after Nadia District was proclaimed Open Defecation Free (ODF). Ethnographic approaches are most often considered in development work for situation analysis or formative research. In this case, however, we took this approach for a ‘retrospective analysis’ of the Sabar Souchagar (Latrines for All) campaign (SSC) in Nadia District. The chapter explores the research design in relation to the participatory, complex, and critical components of the Evaluating Communication for Development (C4D) framework, and concludes with some observations about the applications of this approach in C4D research and evaluation.