CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY
This project work has been conducted through literature review and primary data. General background information and maps of the study area were collected from the internet. Relevant information about the study area was also collected from different books, articles, journals, brochures, thesis papers and research paper etc on study area. Finally, all collected data were compiled in the Literature review section. To fulfill the data requirement different libraries were visited. Helps from Local internet were taken to provide credibility to the villagers and to make data reliable. Sylhet district was selected purposively and a representative village was selected through a multistage random sampling. This sampling method was applied to locate the village and households for the study with upazilla as the primary sampling unit and the households of the villages as the ultimate sampling unit. From a total of 11 upazilla, jaintiapur was selected randomly and from a total of 3 unions in jaintiapur upazilla, one union Nijpat was selected randomly. From Nijpat union the jaflong village was selected at random. There are three punjis of khasia named Lama punji, Songram punji and Noksiar punji under jaflong village. The punjis consists of 80 families called ‘Khasia’ out of which 30 families were selected completely in random. Ten families are selected from each of the punjis randomly. A semi-structured questionnaire was designed to elicit relevant information covering socio-economic characteristics of the villagers, components of home garden, income from primary, secondary, and other sources.
Field investigations were carried out at jaflong at Jaintiapur upazilla of Sylhet district during February-March, 2006. The heads of the families were interviewed on the basis of semi-structured questionnaire and data gathered through administering the questionnaire. The whole households were then categorized into five landholding groups
| Land Holding Category | Land area(in hectare) |
| Land less | <0.02 |
| Marginal | >0.02-0.08 |
| Small | >0.08-0.14 |
| Medium | >0.14-0.20 |
| Large | >0.20 |
The farmers take land from Khasia raja (king) by giving ‘khajna’(revenue) . Considering this pattern, it is supposed in this paper that they are land owner. The farmers are permanently owner of their housing area only that was gifted by raja. Without a very few species surrounding the house, there have no cultivated land. The cultivated lands are far away from their living house. For that reason the measurement of land area are taken excluding habitation area. But the existing species and the number of species are measured from both areas. In vegetation survey each type of vegetation was counted totally by numbers.
Data analysis included preparation of coding schedules for the questionnaire, preparation of data master sheet and their manipulation into convenient forms as used in the results and discussion section subsequently. The work was done both manually and taking the advantages of computer facilities.
