This document summarizes advances in qualitative and quantitative fieldwork from conflict research presented at a Microcon conference. It discusses challenges with data collection in conflict zones, including lack of control and selection bias. It also describes different data sources and methodologies used in Microcon projects, such as existing data sets, new qualitative data collection, and respondent driven sampling. Finally, it addresses ethical issues around protecting respondents and field staff, informed consent, and how research serves policy versus descriptive goals.

1. Advances in qualitative and quantitative
fieldwork
Dr Malik Khalid ehmood PhD
‘Policy and Practice in Violence Affected Contexts: What Can the Latest
Conflict Research Teach Us?‘
Microcon conference, University of Cambridge
June 30th 2010
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2. Data and conflict
• Good data are produced when the researcher
 Has a ‘correct’ conceptualization of the issues
 Has control over the data collection
 Can follow proper procedures and methodology
• Data collection in conflict zones may make all this
difficult
• What has Microcon achieved?
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3. Sources of data in the Microcon projects
• Existing data sets (used in 14 projects)
 Mainly quantitative:
various household-surveys, census, CE-DAT, DHS and death
and vital registrations
 One based only on qualitative data (UNU-EHS)
• New data gathered (used in another 14 projects)
 Mainly qualitative:
focus groups, in-depth interviews, semi-structured narratives
 Some household surveys (India, South Africa, Tanzania)
 Panel study (Burundi)
 Respondent Driven Sampling (Liberia)
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4. Existing data sets used in Microcon projects
Quantitative data
Qualitative and quantitative data
Qualitative data
CE –DAT not included in this overview
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5. New data gathered in Microcon projects
Quantitative data
Qualitative and quantitative data
Qualitative data
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6. Microcon data
Existing quantitative New qualitative
Focus on Africa Quantitative data
Qual and quant data
Qualitative data
West, Sahel and East
In addition
India, Colombia, Indonesia, Europe and European
neighbors
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7. The vicious circle
Bad
conceptualization
Lack of control
Bad data over data
collection
Wrong
methodology
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8. Conceptualization
• Delimitation of study
 Microcon: shift of focus from overall politics of conflict
to households and individual actors
 Leads to different methods, focus on conflict zones
rather than countries, because of households and
individual networks
 Creates need for dealing with network character of
adaption to conflict
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9. Data collection
• Main problem with conflict data:
 Collection only when and where safe, for example
exclusion of zones with particular security problems
 Leads to selection bias
 Linked to ethical issues – resolution may lead to
unacceptable situations
• Because of problems, methodological shortcuts
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10. What is wrong methodology?
• Is there anything particular methodology or philosophy of
science related to conflict studies?
• Probably not – difficult to see where the borderline
between conflict and ordinary society should be in
methodological or philosophical terms
• But empirical field based conflict studies easily raises
practical and ethical questions
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11. One solution: Respondent driven sampling
• Employed in some of the studies
• Problem:
 Fighters can seldom be studied while in the field
 Demobilized fighters usually heavily selected (those not in
rehabilitation, integrated into armed forces difficult to find)
• Chain referral sampling, solution to selection problems by
self selection and incentive system
• RDS used for the first time in conflict studies with Microcon
• Has been criticized for payment of informants
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12. Another solution: Panel studies in conflict areas
• Burundi – more successful than expected in terms of
following the panel
• Considerable discussion about ethics, because of the
possibility of identifying respondents
• But very useful in terms of econometric analysis of conflict
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13. Ethics and Microcon
• Microcon has had a well-developed procedures for the projects to get ethical approval
• Probably better system than most conflict research programs and projects
• Typical problem areas
 Protection of respondents
• Can anonymity be guaranteed?
 Protection of field staff
• Do we expose field staff to danger?
 Informed consent
• Still a problematic area – difficult to make the consent really informed
 Types of questions posed
• Not clear what are really questions that are intrusive or inappropriate
 Who is served by the research?
 Positioning on key issues
• Relation to UN resolutions, international law etc
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14. Protection of respondents
• What is a realistic degree of protection?
 Treatment of questionnaires: Should names be noted on
household rosters? Should cover pages for questionnaires be
stored separately and destroyed immediately when their scientific
use is finished? Can one trust statistical offices or other
cooperating institutions
• Can communities realistically be protected?
 Any intelligence officer with a modicum of intelligence will know
where the researcher was
• Presentation of results
 Will the results present problems for the communities or persons?
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15. Protection of field staff
• The cynical anthropologist: “Let the native walk first on the
path, so that he will wake the snakes and the wild animals”
• We sometimes use local field staff in the same way:
assuming that their knowledge of the local situation will
protect them
• Ethics committee considered the questions surrounding
this – but no real solution.
 Researchers assurance that “good training will be given” not really
an assurance
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16. Informed consent
• Informed consent requires
 That the project is explained fully, or at least so that the
respondent can form a basis for understanding benefits and
drawbacks
 That the respondent understands the explanation
 That the consent is documented (either through signature, or that
the interviewer/researcher writes down that consent has been
obtained)
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17. Informed consent usually involves
• What the study is about
• Description of what the researcher will do
• Description of risks
 May be substantial, but we often do not spell them out
• Description of benefits
 Usually only general ones in the typical Microcon study
• Confidentiality
 Usually the easy part, but legal basis may be absent in many
countries
• Right to withdraw from the study
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18. Types of questions asked
• Informed consent has traditionally been especially
important in the health field
• Because health information is perceived as especially
problematic
• Not clear why this is so – for example why one can ask
about political opinions without fear of ethics boards while
whether or not people had a cold last week would require
permission
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19. Who is served by the research
• Critical researchers?
 Difficult to say what one should be critical of – most of today’s
conflicts are not the Vietnam war
 Critical of say, both Eritrea and Ethiopia, but, what else is new?
• Policy relevant?
 Explicit Microcon aim. Policy relevant for whom? EU foreign policy,
peace keeping
• Embedded researchers?
 Used by US in Iraq, Afghanistan, (the Human Terrain System
program) usually condemned by social science professional
organizations. Is Microcon different (Except not being directly
employed?)
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20. Positioning on key issues
• Focus on empirical description of variation vs relation to
conventions (right based approaches)
 Child labour
 UN resolution 1325 on women and conflict
 Children in armed conflict
• Microcon has in general gone for the variation approach
and not confronted the issue much
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21. Data availability
• Data are becoming available, also on the web,
example:
http://99.88.73.215/OPT.html
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