Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: "Il sondaggio in Iraq" una patacca

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1177327,00.html
Another dodgy dossier 
A poll showing that most Iraqis were happier now was widely and
uncritically reported - but was it accurate?
Brendan O'Neill
Thursday March 25, 2004
The Guardian 
Media reports treated last week's poll of Iraqis, commissioned by the
BBC, ABC News and others, as the population's definitive word on the
war. "Iraqis happier without Saddam" trumpeted headlines, in response
to the claim that 57% think life is better now than it was before the
war. The poll of 2,737 Iraqis was carried out in February by Oxford
Research International (ORI), which describes it as "a national
survey" and "representative". President Bush's official blog gave it
an approving nod: "Thanks to the bravery of our troops, and the
principled, consistent leadership of our president, we are leaving
Iraq better than we found it."
But how representative of Iraqi views is it? Western companies have
conducted polls, but their findings are unconvincing. In October Zogby
International and the American Enterprise magazine said they had
conducted "the first scientific poll of the Iraqi public". Yet their
sample was small: 600 Iraqis in Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk and Ramadi.
Polling in any post-war setting is difficult, and there are additional
problems in Iraq. The UN says there is "a dearth of demographic
information about Iraq's population over the past several decades". As
a consequence of Ba'ath party secrecy, questions remain about the
distribution of ethnic and religious groups and social classes. Iain
Murray, a statistician based in Washington, says that for a poll to be
representative, "matching the sample to the country's demography is
absolutely key. Otherwise, you simply cannot be sure that you are not
weighting the sample unconsciously towards or away from any section of
society."
So how did ORI weight its sample for class and religion, to achieve
results that, according to the BBC, "reflected Iraq's distribution of
population, balance between men and women, and religious and ethnic
mix"? It didn't. Director Christoph Sahm said it weighted by
governorate (Iraq's 18 regions), by distribution between urban and
rural areas, and by age. So there was no weighting by social factors?
"How would you do that?" he says. "How would you know what the
breakdown is? No one knows."
Doesn't this present a problem for pollsters - that "no one knows" the
basic facts about the make-up of the Iraqi population? In ORI's poll,
44% identified themselves as Sunni Muslim and 33% as Shia - yet,
according to other accounts, Sunnis are a minority and Shias a
majority. Sahm says this disparity is not a result of unconscious
weighting, but of "prestige bias" by Iraqis. "In Saddam's Iraq, Sunni
was seen as more prestigious than Shia."
If a large number of respondents answered questions about religion
according to what was "prestigious", perhaps they answered others
according to what was previously expected - that you should give a
positive appraisal of the powers-that-be. Sahm says the poll was
representative because it was "entirely random" and that every
resident aged 15 or over had an equal chance of being selected.
Working from the 1997 census and, where possible, from UN data, ORI
targeted administrative units in descending order of size, and
allocated interviews in each unit proportionate to population size. On
the ground, households were targeted by "random route, random interval
procedures".
Yet such polls require good demographic material from which to select
- ideally a census. The 1997 census is widely viewed as being of poor
quality and covered only 15 of Iraq's 18 governorates, excluding those
that had become autonomous Kurdish territory in 1991; it was conducted
during the era of sanctions; and seems to have been a bit of a rush
job.
It remains questionable whether you can conduct a representative poll
in a country that lacks demographic data and where instability is
rife. ORI's poll does not cover all aspects of postwar Iraq. It asks
whether Iraqis have had an encounter with coalition forces, and when
they think they should leave, but it does not ask about their
day-to-day experience or political view of the occupation. Sahm says
"there was no room for that", and some media groups that commissioned
the poll "did not want a question about the occupation".
Many of the media reports about "happy Iraqis" focused on question
two, which asked: "Compared to a year ago, I mean before the war in
spring 2003, [how] are things overall in your life?": 21.9% said "much
better now"; 34.6% said "somewhat better"; 23.3% said "about the
same"; 12.7% said "somewhat worse"; and 5.9% said "much worse". This
is where the headline figure of 57% comes from - those who reportedly
think Iraq is a better place.
Yet on the specifics, Iraqis appear less optimistic: when asked about
their neighbourhoods, 68.6% think the availability of jobs is bad,
compared with 25.6% who think it is good, 64.4% think the supply of
electricity supply is bad, while 34.9% think it is good, 50.1% think
the security situation is bad, compared with 48.9% who think it is
good. A majority believe public provision has at best remained the
same, or got worse; only on security and crime do most think there has
been an improvement.
The poll also fails to take into account the UN's lifting of sanctions
in May. These restricted access to food, medicine and basic materials.
Perhaps it was the end of sanctions, more than the end of Saddam, that
improved Iraqis' "day-to-day lives".
Some poll findings were ignored. Asked which Iraqi leader they "do not
trust at all", 10.3% said Ahmed Chalabi, compared with only 3.3% for
Saddam Hussein. A large majority, 62%, think that "dealing with
members of the previous government" should be "no priority at all".
But will the coalition cancel plans for war crimes trials? This poll
does not show that "the Iraqi people have spoken", but that many
westerners continue to speak on their behalf.
* Brendan O'Neill is assistant editor of spiked

 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1177327,00.html
E se lo dice il Guardian che di "patacche" ne rifila quasi ogni santo
giorno come non credergli sulla fiducia :)
E come non fidarsi della disinformazione del Torrieri :)
-Stefano

 ha scritto nel messaggio
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.... e se lo dice lui....
-Pippo

 The Guardian
Visto da duve viene la denuncia della patacca credo proprio che il sondaggio
sia attendibile !

 
Evviva! Se lo dice il "Guardian", allora il sondaggio è più che attendibile!