Working with teams of ‘insiders’: Innovations in qualitative data collection in rural South Africa

The focus of this paper is to highlight how the convergence of two methodological strategies of qualitative research – working in 'teams’ and with 'insiders' –can come together to facilitate access, efficiency and insights into research questions of interest to demographers. Much of the extant literature utilizing a team-based approach tends to focus on teams of two or more professors acting as co-principal investigators. Similarly, it is often “lone” ethnographers, usually from a Northern institution, who use local research assistants with “insider” status to serve as interpreter/key informant. Here we draw on projects embedded in a demographic surveillance site in rural South Africa that integrate both approaches. These projects make use of teams of local, “insider” research assistants, who, although not academically trained in qualitative and ethnographic methods, assume roles beyond translating for the investigators and administering focus groups or in-depth interviews. The three projects conducted in the MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt) site in Mpumalanga, South Africa, vary in their use of “teams” and “insiders”, but each brings to light the benefits and limitations of employing the integrated approach.