Methodology and Questionnaire

Methodology

Purposive Sampling Method was used for developing the sample of the study. The criteria for selecting participants were that’s the respondents had to be involved in human rights protection activities. The population of the survey was determined based on this criterion. A list of the population (potential respondents of the survey) was gathered from three sources; a list of HRDs from four nationally renowned human rights organizations, 42 local human rights organizations that were found from various sources like Google search and personal communications and snowballing from local level human rights defenders. Attempts were made to identify respondents from all 64 districts; finally, 50 respondents were included from 36 districts. The main reason for the reduced districts was the insufficiency of respondents from all 64 districts. Among the 36 districts, six of them had two respondents each, and three districts had three respondents each.

Initially, 82 potential respondents were contacted, of which 53 people agreed to participate. All of them were contacted later to conduct the survey but five people declined, and five people did not respond to the questionnaires. Near the end of the survey process, three responses from one human rights organization had to be taken off the list because of the cancellation of their registration due to their internal matters. Later, ten more people were contacted and added to the survey, making the total respondents fifty.

Out of the total 50 surveys, 14 were done over the phone, i.e., the respondents were asked to answer the question over a phone call and the answers were input into the forms by the surveyors. 35 were sent by email or WhatsApp and guided to complete the survey and were received timely. In instances where returned questionnaires had problems such as lack of clarity, enumerators contacted them for clarification and the instruments were completed accordingly. Only one survey was done face-to-face.

The first survey was conducted on 24 May 2023 in a face-to-face meeting and the first on-call survey was conducted on 25 May 2023. The survey process was completed on 24 June 2023.