Using Information Communication Technologies to Understand Relationships Between Labour Saving Agricultural Innovations, Women’s Time Use And Maternal And Child Nutrition Outcomes In Uganda (IMANA)

Donor: DFID through London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)

Duration: 2016-2019

Introduction. Agriculture projects can have positive or negative impacts on maternal and infant well being. This depends on consequences of the projects’ activities and outcomes on women’s workload and the resultant time for child care, leisure activities and personal care, as well as on the accessibility, affordability and utilization of nutritious foods.

Unintentional increases in women’s workloads can occur in interventions aiming to increase the production of nutritious foods; this may ameliorate the positive nutrition benefits expected. The expected nutritional benefits of interventions such as labour-saving devices, for example, could also be attenuated, depending on how the extra time is used and the context, especially factors related to cost or accessibility of local foods.

Accurate and validated indicators of women’s time use and maternal and infant dietary practices are, therefore, needed to evaluate the impact of agriculture project interventions on changes in women’s activity patterns and maternal and infant dietary practices to ensure they have positive and not potentially negative impact on maternal and child nutrition.

Project scope and objectives.

The overall aim of this study is to enhance understanding of the impact of nutrition-sensitive agriculture interventions on women and young children in order to ensure they have a positive rather than a negative effect on maternal and child well-being.  It will aim to develop a set of tools and metrics that will measure maternal time use and maternal and child dietary intakes in a more accurate manner than is done using traditional methods.

The specific objectives of this study are:

  • To assess the feasibility of using an inter-active voice diary and a GPS-linked wearable camera to assess women’s workload, activity patterns and maternal and infant dietary intakes
  • To determine the relative validity of each of these two methods via 12-hour direct observation
  • To compare the results generated using these two methods with those generated using traditional recall techniques
  • To develop a framework of analysis for assessing the positive and negative impacts of alternative nutrition sensitive interventions, such as recommendations to increase the production and consumption of different foods and/or labour-saving technologies on women’s status and well-being.
  • To examine associations between women’s time use in agriculture and maternal and infant dietary diversity and infant growth; and factors in the food environment that mediate food choice.

Research methodology

A cross-sectional mixed method cross-over study will be undertaken with 96 randomly selected rural mother-infant (8-12 months of age) dyads in 12 randomly selected communities across six purposefully selected ethnically and geographically diverse regions of Uganda in which labour saving agricultural devices are being introduced.

Dietary intakes of the dyads and activity patterns of mothers will be assessed over a six-day period by a combination of direct observation (OB; gold standard), interactive voice diaries (Voice Diary; new tool), GPS-wearable cameras (Camera: new tool) and 24-hour recalls (Recall; traditional tool).  Focus group discussions (FGD) will then be held with participating mothers (n=3 FGD per region) to discuss their experiences / opinions about each of the three tools (i.e., Voice Diary, Camera or Recall).

Questionnaire and anthropometric data (height/length and weight of mothers and infants) will also be collected for descriptive purposes.

PROJECTS FOR THE PROGRAMME