Taiwan’s Farmers Union: Challenges

Dr. Peter Chang told us that we were taking a field trip today. There was a meeting for the Farmer’s Union by our hospital and we were invited to conduct surveys. We had no clue where we were going but P and I went with him and Candy/Duong/Din Ya (office staff). We thought it was going to be all older men but it turns out the Farmer’s union is for women! Our Professor is known to be a ladies man so all the older women loved him. He introduced the project and we introduced ourselves to the Aunties. They were working on a flower frame project and once they were done, we would conduct the health literacy survey with them.

It was actually a very difficult task for us. They were considered oldest-oldest in seniors and most of them had a middle or elementary school education. As a farmer, literacy was not an important trait to have in their line of work so they never bothered going back to school. We had to try to explain to each of them what the survey was about. They only spoke the Taiwanese dialect and half of them did not bring their reading glasses.

I would say- there was about 60 of them but only 22 could be counted as most were considered incomplete. We ran out of time, the writing was small and they struggled to understand the survey. This made difficulties in data collection as it was not completed under considerable conditions. We had to throw out the ones that were not up to standard which made me feel that we wasted a lot of time. I guess this really shows the importance of revision and trial. It is important to really work with the