Abstract:
This study was funded by the Ford Foundation as part of a programme for training epidemiologists, and the study was designed to provide information for the Carnegie enquiry into poverty among Black communities in South Africa. Our particular interest is the relationship between ill health and poverty. The health problems of a community are usually defined by health professionals using "objective" research methods. We felt that subjective data (llbat people feel) 1s needed to complement and integrate the reality defined by objective research methods. There is, otherwise, the danger that professional judgement will overlook some
"felt" problems of a particular community. With this in mind, we decided to discover lIbat a cross-section of people from different communities perceived BS problems. We therefore decided to visit 14 areas and asked people to tell us what they saw as the 10 major problems in their communities. We then rated them according to the frequency with which they were mentioned. The interviews were conducted in 1982.