Presentation made to a panel discussion on "Civilian Deaths in Iraq: Quantitative Estimates and Policy Implications," held at the United States Institute for Peace (USIP), Washington DC, 10 Jan 2007.
Respondent self-selection:
Once in the clusters, the teams faced suspicion initially, especially at the first house selected in the random process. Lengthy explanations of the purposes of the survey—and that it would help the Iraqi people—were necessary to allay fears. In some areas, people were more welcoming, and all but a very few of the entire sample were eventually very cooperative. The Human Cost of the War in Iraq (study notes by Burnham, Roberts, et al., MIT 2006)
1 The Human Cost of the War in Iraq [PDF] Center for International Studies, MIT (2006).
In certain non-sensitive surveys it may be fine to involve local communities to expedite the process, to relay the purposes of the survey across local kinship networks, and generally participate in the entire process. But this is the most charged and emotive subject anyone can possibly broach in Iraq. Imagine if, after having finally won local good-will and cooperation by promising to record people’s grief and losses, these surveyors – these strangers – start refusing people who come forward with precisely that experience on the basis that they lived (say) on the wrong side of the street. We would contend that this would be most unlikely to lead to almost “the entire sample” eventually becoming “very cooperative.” 1