Climate Change Adaptation amid Layered Vulnerabilities: Mapping Smallholder Farmers’ Adaptive Capacities and Strategy Patterns across Socio-Ecological Gradients in Post-Conflict Acholi, Northern Uganda

Abstract

This dataset contains household survey data from the rural Acholi sub-region, Northern Uganda, collected in 2025 to analyze the dynamics of smallholder farmers’ adaptation to climate change and layered vulnerabilities in the post-conflict context. It includes variables on demographic, socioeconomic, environmental, political, and institutional factors influencing livelihoods and adaptation, including perceived challenges, their frequency and severity, selected adaptation strategies, their success, and barriers to implementation. It also included eleven mental health screening questions based on the DSM-5 PTSD psychometric assessment guide (Prins, Bovin, & Smolenski, 2016), addressing five dimensions: intrusive memories, avoidance, negative mood or thoughts, hypervigilance, and sleep or concentration problems. Further, four sets of questions were also included to assess households’ exposure to conflict. Conflict exposure-probing questions focused on the family level, capturing variables such as displacement, internment in camps, war-related asset loss, and close relatives’ injury or death from the historical civil war, following guides by Brück, Justino, Verwimp, Tedesco, and Avdeenko (2013). In the survey tool, most questions were closed-ended with multiple-response options, including “other.” The instrument was pre-tested on 163 households in Keyo village, Amuru district, and subsequently revised to resolve ambiguities. The data are provided in a .RData format alongside detailed R scripts and can be used to reproduce the study or for related research.