KEMITRAAN is one of Indonesian institutions that have received support from IDRC Canada and OAK Foundation to implement research activities on climate change issues as well as support to improving organization capacity as an Indonesian think tank.
As an effort to improve capacity, KEMITRAAN assigned six researchers to attend the series of quantitative and qualitative methodology training held by The Consortium of Social Researchers Institution. Those trainings were divided into two batches; April 23-26 2021, for quantitative research method training and May 28-31, 2021, for qualitative research method training.
Not only that such training obtained positive responses from participants, training indeed provided all participants with a time to refresh their knowledge and skills. “The positive thing that I got from this training was about cross-disciplinary discussions that are useful as reference when developing cross-disciplinary studies,” said Petra, one of the KEMITRAAN’s researchers who attended the qualitative method training.
Other than Petra, Riana, a female researcher, felt fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend the training. Through this capacity building program, she finally could improved understanding of research methodology. Moreover, she claimed to have increased her critical thinking in developing a research methodology which she was previously lacking”.
Meanwhile, Irfan, KEMITRAAN’s researcher who has an interest in big data, said that “The most interesting part of the training was about big data. However, the explanation about research methodology for big data was not sufficient enough. It is because conducting big data research techniques is quite new.”
After completing the last day training session, all participants took the final examination; post-test, essay, and certification exams. “The pre-test and post-test were also very interesting because some of the questions were not familiar. The essay task for quantitative research was also very challenging. It required creativity and ideas to answer the research design essay,” said Rizki Affiat. Currently, the six KEMITRAAN’s researchers passed the exam and successfully received certifications as certified researchers.
Besides giving substantial improvement, the process of certification also provides benefits to the administrative side. Through certified researchers, KEMITRAAN becomes formally eligible to access the research funds of the government.
Currently, the six KEMITRAAN’s certified researchers have been involved as research experts in Indonesia Governance Index (IGI) study, collaborating with the Directorate General of Regional Autonomy, Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA). Furthermore, they will also contribute to Climate Budget Tagging (CBT) and IGI-Climate resilience research. Both of these research will focus on climate change resilience. Furthermore, as part of capacity building, the certified researchers will also transfer the research methodology knowledge to all KEMITRAAN staff.
This programme supported by: