M.A. Dissertation
Informal Financial Institutions (IFIs) are likely to have potential contributions to people’s
enhanced wellbeing in general. However, apart from material wellbeing, there is little
knowledge about the contribution of IFIs especially Accumulating Savings and Credit
Associations (ASCAs) to the social wellbeing particularly social connectedness to its
members. This was the driving force to conducting this research. This study was done to
examine the role played by ASCAs in improving social wellbeing of their members. The
specific objectives were to examine the factors which motivate people to join ASCAs,
identify benefits other than financial enjoyed by the members of ASCAs, determine levels
of social wellbeing achieved by participants in ASCAs and analyse challenges faced by
members of ASCAs to achieve their goals. The study adopted a cross-sectional research
design to achieve the stated objectives in which a combination of purposive and simple
random sampling techniques was employed to select a sample size of 108 respondents
who were members of ASCAs. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered through a
structured questionnaire survey as well as KIIs and FGDs whereby analysis was done
using IBM SPSS Statistics computer programme version 21 and content analysis
respectively. The inferential statistics ‘paired sample t-test’ was employed to test
significant improvement in social connectedness before and after membership to ASCAs.
The results showed that ASCAs are rich of opportunities sought by people for their well
being. Apart from financial benefits, ASCAs have positive contribution to the
improvement of social connectedness to their members offering members’ improved
satisfaction with life. The findings also showed that members’ social connectedness
increased by 25.8%; the increase was significantly different at 0.05 (p = 0.000) as the
results of a paired samples t-test of comparing members’ level of social connectedness
before and after membership to ASCAs. ASCAs face some challenges, among other