Academic research: the Nigerian prison experience

Abstract

Conducting research in the prisons has its ups and downs. Majority of time, researchers face stress, rigor and challenges. It is documented that data collected in the prison shows poor response and high attrition rate. This article intends to share practical experience from the research carried out titled: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory -2- Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF) profile of prisoners in Southwestern Nigeria and to showhow attrition rate and research bias can be managed and how prisoners can be recruitedwithout the use of coercion. It was found that the factors that cause a high rate of wear andtear analyzed the questionnaire at length, the cause being the ambiguity of the questionsand the desire of the respondents to thank the researchers. Therefore, it is necessary forresearchers to use questionnaires with fewer items, the language of the questionnaire shouldbe easy to understand and researchers should be careful of being sentimental with theprisoners.

Keywords

• prisons
• prisoners
• surveys
• nigeria