Tuesday 16th July
Wednesday 17th July
Thursday 18th July
Friday 19th July
Download the conference book
Survey research in developing countries 1 |
|
| Convenor | Dr Evelyn Ersanilli (University of Oxford) |
| Coordinator 1 | Dr Melissa Siegel (Maastricht Graduate School of Governance ) |
Research on survey methodology is burgeoning. However, most research on survey methodology is conducted in developed countries and it remains unclear to what extent best practices developed there are also valid in developing countries.
On the one hand survey researchers in developing countries do not always share the problems of their colleagues in developed countries. Response rates are for instance rarely an issue in rural Africa where social trust is high and surveys are sometimes seen as a welcome break from the monotony of daily life rather than an infringement on personal time. On the other hand the demographic structure and level of development of these countries can pose a number of specific challenges. A high number of different local languages can complicate questionnaire translation, low quality roads make it hard to reach remote villages and obtain a representative sample, ethnic tensions can make the selection of interviewers an arduous task. Some challenges such as the lack of up-to-date data on population size and composition are not unique to the development context, but are more common.
This session aims to explore the challenges involved in conducting survey research in developing countries and discuss best practices. We welcome papers on all phases of survey design and data collection. Papers may address topics such as:
- Creating sampling frames with good coverage
- Consequences of illiteracy/low literacy for questionnaire and answer scale design
- Development of standardised question wording in areas with high linguistic diversity or non-standardised scripts
- Conducting surveys in non-democratic countries
- Conducting surveys in countries with (recent) ethnic tensions or civil war
- The role of gender in survey research in patriarchal cultures
- Use of mobile phone and other modern communication technology in survey research
- Cultural challenges in partnerships with local researchers and authorities (hierarchy, post-colonialism)
"Africa's Voices" combines mobile phones and interactive radio to survey audiences' opinions on governance and development issues. Radios stations based on ten African countries ask weekly questions to their listeners who answer via SMS. The answers were exported to Cambridge for comparative analysis and the results shared with the stations producing material for radio shows. By encouraging debate and accountability, Africa's Voices aims to be a continental-wide collaborative platform on African's public opinion. The one-year pilot of Africa's Voices uses a quasi-experimental design to test and compare different methodologies to optimize the implementation of the project in the radio stations. Working closely with FrontlineSMS, radio partners, and receiving inputs from audiences, the pilot has allowed to explore methodological innovations and to reflect upon ethical challenges. In this paper, the research background and the preliminary insights of "Africa's Voices" will be presented leading to discussion around the potential and limitations of conducting ICT-based survey research in the African context.
During the President election campaign in 2012 the leading Russian pollsters FOM, WCIOM and Levada's Centre published regularly the results of electoral preferences of the Russians. These data could be interpreted only in one way: Putin was getting more than 50% votes of the potential voting participants in the first round. At the same time some sociologists, experts and other observers were sceptical of these data.
Some freelancers and researchers of different companies united and realized the project "Open Opinion" to verify the validity of these doubts. It was realized as an open collaboration research. Thr project had three main aims. 1. CATI was used to hold an electoral poll in the Russian Federation for the first time and the results were compared with PAPI properly. 2. To increase the credibility of the published public opinion poll results. 3. The technology of "open collaboration research" was first realized to conduct the sociological research. Researchers held every research step (from the choice of data collection method to the formulation of the study conclusions) in an open group at Facebook. The money was collected by the use of social nets to conduct a field step of the research.
In 2012 two open collaboration researches were conducted on the base of receiving results. They were "Open Opinion" in Astrakhan' and "Open Opinion" in Khimki. On the one hand the technology lets freelancers combine efforts to collect and publish key and important information for public opinion, on the other hand it satisfies public
The increasing popularity of web surveys has triggered a heated debate about their quality for scientific use. Web surveys offer advantages such as worldwide coverage, cost benefits, fast data collection and flexible questionnaire design. The disadvantage is that they may not be representative because the sub-population with Internet access is quite specific. Findings for developed countries consistently show that young highly educated men are overrepresented in web surveys. While the question of representativeness and methodological solutions has been extensively discussed for developed countries, the question remains whether similar biases can be found for developing countries. Even though in developing countries Internet access is still low, their fast increase makes a growth in web surveys likely.
For eight developing countries this paper explores to what extent different survey modes produce more reliable data with respect to core socio-demographic characteristics (China, Ghana, Honduras, Indonesia, Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, Zambia), comparing the data of f2f and web surveys (2010-2012,N=51,509). These continuous, volunteer web surveys are posted on national WageIndicator websites, asking socio-demographic, wage and work-related questions. WageIndicator Foundation conducted f2f surveys parallel, using business registers for sampling.
When comparing the age*gender distribution of both survey modes with current ILO national labour force estimates, the results reveal that across countries the web samples are characterized by an overrepresentation of young men and women and an underrepresentation of older men and women. Interestingly, the same deviations, but to a smaller extent can be observed for f2f samples.
Little is known about the household panel recruitment in emerging markets or developing countries where is a collection of diverse regions with economic growth, technology development, cultures, dialects, consumer behaviors, lifestyles, and inequivalent or limited understanding on the concept of survey research. In consideration of growing Internet usage in China, online recruitment method can be leveraged for particular hard-to-reach segments in China. The Nielsen Company has developed a mixed-mode method of recruiting households online as well as face-to-face for a consumer panel to study their purchasing behavior. This presentation will cover aspects of project implementation, including quota sampling, questionnaire content, translation issues, and other design considerations of the mixed-mode recruitment approach by analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data collected from each mode. In addition, field experiences of panel attrition and maintenance among recruited households will be presented, including the maintenance strategies, participation history, duration in the panel, and activity status of households recruited by mixed-mode. Multivariate modeling technique will be used to potentially predict the likelihood of households to cooperate and stay in the panel using data collected online and face-to-face recruitment such as drop-off, household/respondent demographics, purchasing behavior, lifestyle variables, geography, etc. Finally, qualitative interviews will be conducted with the field recruiters to gather insights on operational challenges and best practices of the recruitment process and tools provided.