DOI: 10.5061/dryad.0vt4b8h4n
title: Data from: Understanding constraints to adaptation using a community-centered toolkit

description: These data are part of a data portal that accompanies the special issue
 ‘Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture,’ published in
 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B in 2023. To access the
 data portal, please visit 10.5061/dryad.bnzs7h4h4. We worked with
 community leaders and local researchers in Andavadoaka, Madagascar, to
 develop the two focus group discussion guides and the survey that form
 this toolkit. Each is rooted in the central question, "What do you
 wish that conservationists and scientists asked you before suggesting
 changes for your community as you confront climate change and biodiversity
 loss?". This toolkit is designed to guide interviewers through
 assessing either 1) a community-produced project idea or 2) an
 external-generated prospective project idea or ongoing project (to assess
 if and how community and collaborator goals for this project could align).
 In our case, community leaders involved with the development of this
 toolkit used it to solicit problems and solutions from the community and
 explore a novel, community-selected project idea, rather than to collect
 feedback on an ongoing intervention. We then piloted the toolkit
 implementation process and present here the results alongside suggestions
 for the future use of these materials. The Agency Toolkit module is
 designed to be self-contained and assist the collaborator through each
 step of the process within a two-week period. We detail a suggested
 schedule in Supplementary Materials 5. Before the project, authors met
 with community leaders to introduce the project and ask for their input in
 creating a tool to guide conversations on conservation and climate change
 adaptation initiatives. We explained both our desire for and ability to
 incorporate their feedback directly into the tool itself, as well as the
 desire to pilot the tool in the community. After gaining initial feedback
 and approval, we introduced these same study aims to all members of the
 focus group, who acted to disseminate this information to the broader
 community. Tools were translated into the local Vezo dialect of Malagasy,
 and back-translated to ensure correct meanings and cultural relevance of
 all questions. For focus groups, G.M. and R.S. extended invitations to men
 and women in the community by visiting every household in Andavadoaka.
 Upon invitation, we informed participants that attendance was fully
 voluntary and that declining engagement in the study would not affect
 their relationship with the Morombe Archaeological Project or any of its
 affiliates. Every person who was willing to participate was selected for
 the focus groups. At the start of each focus group, we obtained informed
 oral consent and communicated to participants that they could withdraw at
 any point during the study, leave a discussion or interview early, or skip
 any questions they did not feel comfortable answering without affecting
 the compensation for their time or their relationship with the
 researchers. We received consent to audio-record focus groups. Members
 were provided with refreshments and compensation equivalent to USD 7
 (based on a local average wage of 30,000 Ariary per day, yielding
 approximately $1 per hour of engagement with this project). Similarly, we
 documented oral consent for all participants who agreed to individual
 interviews. Participants did not receive compensation for participating in
 individual interviews. To ensure the survey respondents’ anonymity, we
 removed names and identifying information from data made accessible for
 open-source access. The Columbia University Internal Review Board reviewed
 and deemed this research exempt from approval (Columbia IRB #AAAU3639; PSU
 IRB #00021067). We conducted this research with the requisite permits and
 approval from the Centre de Documentation et de Recherche sur l’Art et les
 Traditions Orales à Madagascar and l’Université de Toliara.
description: As part of the co-production of this tool, all survey questions
 were workshopped with local community members and subject matter experts.
 We recommend this workshop and adaptation process be a part of tool
 implementation to 1. ensure the instrument asks questions of interest to
 community members in ways that are 2. relevant to the local culture and
 topics of concern. The survey serves as a base framework that can be
 adapted with each use. In this region, as in many
 regions where this toolkit may be implemented, an existing sampling frame
 (such as a census) was not available. We surveyed 149 individuals, 99
 women (65.56%) and 50 men (33.11%); ~10% of the study population. This
 provided an 8.8% margin of error within a 95% confidence level. In order
 to effectively sample enough participants while also accounting for
 differing experiences across the population, we implemented a multistage
 stratified sample. We mapped our community by employing survey teams to
 document and number each household in the target area. Available
 demographic data from the recent regional census (2014–2015, available
 here) suggested the total population of Andavadoaka to be 1,355,
 approximately 51.7% female and 48.3% male (age subset information for
 Andavadoaka was not available). We then used a random number generator to
 select the numbers of households to be sampled. We marked these on each
 surveyor’s map and allotted a total quota of people per interviewer (one
 person per household). We subdivided this quota as half male and half
 female and across genders a roughly third of each gender in the following
 age brackets: 18–24 (young adult), 24–49 (adult), and 50+ (senior). If a
 household was not available, that interviewer marked the house for one
 follow-up but otherwise proceeded to the following house. At the
 individual level, each interviewer cycled through the substrata until each
 sub-quota was complete. This multistage stratified approach allowed us to
 cover large areas, while also sampling a diverse subset of the
 population. Interviews took place inside or near each
 individual’s home, at the discretion of the participant, to protect the
 participant’s privacy. Researchers fluent in Malagasy obtained consent
 from participants and administered the survey in Enketo Webforms
 (KoboToolbox) on iPads. Survey questions are available in Supplementary
 Materials 1. Following the BCQ, barriers were measured on a Likert scale
 from "No problem – 1", "Small problem – 2",
 "Problem – 3," "Big Problem – 4." and "Very Big
 Problem – 5." 
description: The R code file (Barriers.R) processes and analyzes the data in
 Cleaned Data.csv. For a description of what variables and values mean, see
 the data dictionary. Data and code are also available
 via GitHub (https://github.com/dcbuffa/agency-toolkit). 
description: README ## agency-toolkit Repository for survey data analysis code in Buffa
 et al. (under review) "Understanding constraints to adaptation using
 a community-centered toolkit" ## Summary These data are part of a
 data portal that accompanies the special issue Climate change adaptation
 needs a science of culture, published in Philosophical Transactions of the
 Royal Society B in 2023. To access the data portal, please visit (doi
 hyperlink to be added at publication). We worked with community leaders
 and local researchers in Andavadoaka, Madagascar, to develop the two focus
 group discussion guides and the survey that form this toolkit. Each is
 rooted in the central question, "What do you wish that
 conservationists and scientists asked you before suggesting changes for
 your community as you confront climate change and biodiversity
 loss?". This toolkit is designed to guide interviewers through
 assessing either 1) a community-produced project idea or 2) an
 external-generated prospective project idea or ongoing project (to assess
 if and how community and collaborator goals for this project could align).
 In our case, community leaders involved with the development of this
 toolkit used it to solicit problems and solutions from the community and
 explore a novel, community-selected project idea, rather than to collect
 feedback on an ongoing intervention. We then piloted the toolkit
 implementation process and present here the results alongside suggestions
 for the future useof these materials. The Agency Toolkit module is
 designed to be self-contained and assist the collaborator through each
 step of the process within a two-week period. We detail a suggested
 schedule in Supplementary Materials 5 of the manuscript. On this portal,
 we provide anonymized results of our survey and all R code required to
 replicate our analysis. Additional materials, including the ODK input for
 the English-Malagasy (Vezo dialect) version of our survey and MS Word
 documents for focus group guidelines, can be found in the Supplementary
 Materials of the manuscript. Ethical Note Before the project, authors met
 with community leaders to introduce the project and ask for their input in
 creating a tool to guide conversations on conservation and climate change
 adaptation initiatives. We explained both our desire for and ability to
 incorporate their feedback directly into the tool itself, as well as the
 desire to pilot the tool in the community. After gaining initial feedback
 and approval, we introduced these same study aims to all members of the
 focus group, who acted to disseminate this information to the broader
 community. Tools were translated into the local Vezo dialect of Malagasy,
 and back-translated to ensure correct meanings and cultural relevance of
 all questions. For focus groups, G.M. and R.S. extended invitations to men
 and women in the community by visiting every household in Andavadoaka.
 Upon invitation, we informed participants that attendance was fully
 voluntary and that declining engagement in the study would not affect
 their relationship with the Morombe Archaeological Project or any of its
 affiliates. Every person who was willing to participate was selected for
 the focus groups. At the start of each focus group, we obtained informed
 oral consent and communicated to participants that they could withdraw at
 any point during the study, leave a discussion or interview early, or skip
 any questions they did not feel comfortable answering without affecting
 the compensation for their time or their relationship with the
 researchers. We received consent to audio-record focus groups. Members
 were provided with refreshments and compensation equivalent to USD 7
 (based on a local average wage of 30 000 Ariary per day, yielding
 approximately $1 per hour of engagement with this project). Similarly, we
 documented oral consent for all participants who agreed to individual
 interviews. Participants did not receive compensation for participating in
 individual interviews. To ensure the survey respondents anonymity, we
 removed names and identifying information from data made accessible for
 open-source access. The Columbia University Internal Review Board reviewed
 and deemed this research exempt from approval (Columbia IRB #AAAU3639; PSU
 IRB #00021067). We conducted this research with the requisite permits and
 approval from the Centre de Documentation et de Recherche sur lArt et les
 Traditions Orales Madagascar and lUniversit de Toliara. ## Description of
 the data and file structure The R code file (Barriers.R) processes and
 analyzes the data in Cleaned Data.csv. Data in Cleaned Data.csv is a
 reformatted version of toolkitsurvey.xlsx provided in long form. In other
 words, it is provided in a vertical format. Long form data is required by
 the likert R package for analysis. For a description of what variables and
 values mean, see the data dictionary. ## Sharing/Access information Data
 and code are also available on Dryad (hyperlink to be added at
 publication). ## Code/Software Code used to analyze the anonymized
 qualitative data was written in R version 4.2.2 using RStudio.