Analysis Of Factors Influencing Community Participation In Development Projects, A Case Study Of Uasin Gishu County.

Abstract

ABSTRACT Community participation has been a widespread terminology in development and management all over the World as evidence from the policy guidelines of many countries (Kombo and Kimani, 2011). This has been geared towards tapping the potential of the people in improving their living standards. This research project aimed at discussing the factors that influence community participation in development projects. Three factors were chosen as important for this study, that is, literacy level, income levels and corruption. The researcher wanted to establish the impacts of each of the factors on the level of community participation.Three research objectives were adopted in accordance to the number of independent variables, to guide the research process. The significance of the study, and limitations were also captured in the chapter corruption, income levels and illiteracy were found to have negative impacts on the level of community participation. Negativity, low literacy skills and knowledge, low income and inability to access information were found to be the end results that limited societal participation in community development projects. Chapter two of the research included a review of all existing literatures the researcher came across, as well as the conceptual framework of the research. Each of the three factors was discussed in detail in the review of the literatures. Chapter three contains the research design, and the target population as well as the study area. A descriptive design was adopted for this study, due to the measurability of the factors. The methods of data collection and data collection instruments are explained. Questionnaires with both structured and non structured questions were used to interview respondents. The sampling procedure and sample size determination formula was also presented. Both simple random sampling procedure and cluster sampling procedure were used in this research, whereby a total of 50 respondents were selected from the sample size of 384. Computer SPSS software was used to analyze the collected data. Chapter four of the research includes the presentation of the data collected from the field, and a presentation of the data was done using pie charts and bar graphs. Data analysis was also done using descriptive statistics like means, mode, standard deviation, variance and skewness. The factors represented different results of these statistics. Data analysis was also done using bar graphs. Chapter five of this study contains a discussion of the analysis and interpretation of results from collected data, and a conclusion from the discussion. Some policy recommendations have also been pointed out as the last part of this research which would help to address the research problem. This research has therefore succeeded in identifying the main factors that influence community participation in development projects, and aims to impart knowledge on concerned parties for appropriate remedy measures to be taken to ensure full participation and sustainability of community public project