> Another caveat is the methods how the survey was administered. I find
> it hard to believe that the interviewers were freely roaming through the
> streets of Baghdad, asking people questions. A more likely scenario is
> that the interviewers were somehow 'embedded.' Now how likely is it
> that a person in an occupied country asked by an interviewer accompanied
> by the occupying army soldiers would say that he/she does not like the
> occupying army? Or perhaps there was a variation in how the survey was
> administered (i.e. some interviewers were embedded while others were
> not) -which if true may help explaining the remarkably small differences
> between socio-demographic groups - those asked by 'embedded'
> interviewers (men and women alike) gave 'safe' responses, while those
> asked by not embedded ones spoke up their minds.
Here's a bit more information on how this poll was carried out.
The Daily Telegraph (which is owned by Conrad Black, who owns the Spectator, which co-commissioned the poll) reported this on 17 July 2003:
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/07/17/wpoll17.xml
>
*** YouGov, the British polling firm, admits that conditions for the survey, commissioned by the Spectator magazine and Channel Four last week, were "not ideal".
The polling was done only in Baghdad, against the background of gunfire and explosions. In one case, questioners were directly threatened with guns.
Three pollsters from Britain travelled to Baghdad, where they trained a group of interviewers recruited from among students at the university. They conducted the survey in 20 areas of the city, questioning Iraqis face-to-face and giving out forms.
"We believe we have listened to as good a cross-section of the population of Baghdad as the less-than-perfect conditions allowed; confident also that they were giving us their authentic views," write two of the pollsters, Rosamund Shakespeare and Mark Riley, in today's issue of the Spectator.
After decades of dictatorship, the pollsters found Iraqis were keen to speak out.
They added: "We were struck by how keen Baghdadis were to express themselves . . . Far from being nervous about being interviewed, they wanted to say more and more. This place seems ripe for some kind of democracy." ***
And the article mentioned above, in the 19 July issue of the Spectator, is also online at <http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=200 3-08-30&id=3316&searchText=>
'We must be crazy'
Rosamund Shakespeare and Mark Riley
We just want to ask people a few questions,¹ we said, innocently clutching our pollster¹s clipboards. The GI didn¹t know whether to laugh or give us a slap. ŒYou¹re out of your heads. Don¹t even think of leaving the Palestine Hotel. I¹ve been in every kind of war situation you can imagine, and this is the most dangerous ‹ because there are no rules. It¹s completely unpredictable. Now they¹ve taken to CQAs (close-quarter assassinations). It¹s open season on Westerners.¹
A month earlier, the editor of The Spectator had asked YouGov to conduct a poll in Iraq. Our reaction had been the same as the GI¹s: he must be crazy. Apart from the danger, as Internet-based pollsters, the idea of polling in a country where the telephones still don¹t work was unthinkable. But week after week, he came back to us, refusing to take no for an answer. ŒYou have a fundamental responsibility here,¹ he said.
He was right. It was something that had to be done. YouGov operates on the principle that high-quality public-opinion research should play a central part in the decision-making process. People with the power to shape our world need to understand the views of everyone affected, and be responsive to them. And nowhere in the world right now is public opinion as important as in Iraq. If America and Britain are prepared, in the name of its citizens, to invade a country and overthrow its government, we must understand them. If we truly want to build a better future for Iraqis, we must listen to them first.
So yes, somehow we had to do the poll. But we also had to be realistic. Even non-military foreigners were coming under attack. A journalist had just been shot dead at the University of Baghdad. Our contacts within the city were telling us that Saddam¹s friends had put up a $5,000 bounty for every Westerner killed. Not ideal conditions for conducting an opinion poll. We clearly couldn¹t poll right across Iraq: we decided to concentrate just on Baghdad. We would do the best we could with conventional methodology in a seriously unconventional setting: we packed flak jackets along with a thousand copies of the survey.
There were three of us from YouGov (one a native Arabic-speaker, born in Iraq) flying to Kuwait, hiring a car, and driving unprotected across the desert via Nasiriya to Baghdad. On our second day, we went to Baghdad University to see the dean, who approved the survey and helped us recruit eight interviewers from two of his departments. Channel 4 News, who are co-sponsors of this poll, filmed us training them. Perhaps Œtraining¹ isn¹t the right word ‹ certainly it wasn¹t up to the standards the Market Research Society would expect ‹ but at least we took them through the basics. The poll was conducted at 20 locations across Baghdad, with YouGov driving around to monitor progress. Some were by face-to-face interview, some by supervised self-completion. Watching the people of Baghdad set out their views was exhilarating; but the exhilaration jostled with fear. We heard gunfire or explosions nearly every hour. At one point a machine-gun was lifted in the air and several rounds fired off ‹ which can mean a signal to fellow-terrorists that Westerners are in the area. We disappeared.
Occasionally our interviewers were threatened, in one case with a gun. Nevertheless, we achieved our objectives. We polled people in 20 different parts of the city, in areas rich and poor. We questioned men and women, young and old, Shi¹ite and Sunni Muslims, university graduates and people with little schooling. We believe we have listened to as good a cross-section of the population of Baghdad as the less-than-perfect conditions allowed; confident also that they were giving us their authentic views. Our conversations in the bars in the evening confirmed the data set out in the tables: that people were in favour of the US/British action, but that their high hopes for a better life ‹ promised in leaflets that had been dropped from the sky ‹ were floundering. Why was it taking the US so long to get things back to normal? Frustration was edging close to outright anger. They are at the end of their patience. The city might tip into violence at any time.
We were struck by how keen Baghdadians were to express themselves: when the survey interview was over, it was sometimes difficult to disengage from a stream of additional comments. Far from being nervous about being interviewed, they wanted to say more and more. This place seems ripe for some kind of democracy.
After collecting 800 completed surveys in three days, we were relieved to be heading back to Kuwait, again unprotected and alone in an old car on an eerily empty road. The worst moment was when we were trapped for a few hours in a sandstorm ‹ this, we were told, is when attackers are most likely to swoop. The day before, a Western aid SUV had been ambushed and all the occupants killed. But the storm passed, and we got to the border, our boot filled with the first real evidence of how the citizens of Baghdad feel about the war and the future ‹ and probably the first poll ever conducted by an independent Western agency in what is still a war zone.
***
Chris