It has become a common
phenomenon, pollsters coming up with percentages and creating stories that have
profound effects on the psyche of the nation. Social science research often
involves collecting data in order to capture the views of individuals. However,
social sciences distinguish themselves from common sense and pure rumor
mongering because of adhering to scientific principles. Science as a way of
knowing is unique because of effort exerted to ensure replicability of
findings, objectivity, logical reasoning, purposefulness, empirical evidence,
clearly defined methodology, systematic study process and ethical consideration
throughout the inquiry process. For any research to be worthy of the scientific
label, it has to be thoroughly and systematically thought through in such a
manner that others doing a similar study can get similar results subject to a
given margin of error.
Pollsters in Kenya
continue to baffle me; they failed in getting presidential polls right but that
did not jostle them into changing their ways. In the recent past, they focused
on rating politicians in the most haphazard manner possible. It really begs the
question whether these people appreciate the complexity of delivering a
scientific study.
An opinion poll, it may
be argued, is relatively simple and straight forward. What we basically need is
opinions of a representative sample. The real challenge when it comes to
opinion polls is getting the representative sample. The challenge is compounded
when the influence of politics has to be considered in identifying the
representative sample. In ordinary circumstances, multistage sampling that
involves creating clusters and by simple random picking a sample from the
identified clusters would suffice. The challenge is that in politics,
representativeness is affected by difficulty in choosing a cluster that would
not deliver biased results. For instance, how does one ensure that the cluster
chosen is not an area dominated by people who are politically biased? This can
only be addressed by taking on huge samples. Flawed as the process maybe,
opinion polls can give indication in terms of who is the preferred presidential
candidate; as long as the sample is big enough and clusters are carefully
considered.
The sickest thing to do
is to use the polling strategies in trying to measure the performance of
senators, governors or to rank counties. I am amused because such a methodology
was used recently by Infotrak to rank governors and senators in the country.
What is wrong with using opinion poll methodology to measure performance of
politicians? First, the question of sampling, which is a challenge for all
opinion polls, arises. But that is not the real problem; the real problem is
reducing performance to a matter of opinion or perception. This is how these
pollsters get it all wrong; performance is not a matter of opinion or
perception.
A few months ago, the
World Bank released a report in which Bungoma County was ranked among counties
spending least funds on development. A few weeks ago, infortrack released a
report ranking Governor Lusaka second among the best performing governors in Kenya.
The question is “who is fooling Kenyans?” This week, infortrack released
findings and ratings of senators based on their performance in the counties and
in the senate. To the extent, infortrack is merely publishing opinions then
their findings may be entertained. However, questions in terms of sampling
procedure and sample size would have to be answered to determine whether their
findings actually capture the opinions and perceptions of majority of the people.
What is wrong is that infortrack findings are not presented as views, opinions
of some people interviewed. They are presented with absolute certainty that
they are providing an indication of levels of performance of politicians.
What variables are the
pollsters using to measure performance? People’s perceptions or opinions are
not valid measures of performance. For instance, my governor Lusaka and
Wetangula my senator have been ranked highly as performers based on opinion
poll. However, we know that people’s opinions are influenced by political processes
rather than actual performance. To measure actual performance of governors,
pollsters or researchers need objective measures. Such quantitative measures
can include expenditure on development against recurrent expenditure, local
revenue generation, change in livelihoods of locals, cost-benefit ratios for
projects implemented, level of citizen participation in projects, Investment
volumes attracted or enabled etc. Such measures would give clear indications in
terms of initial conditions, the interventions, the cost of interventions and
actual results from projects undertaken by the governors.
If we want to measure
the performance of MPs, the constitutional roles in parliament and the use of
CDF is the only objective measure. As for senators and women reps, we can only
do popularity polls because they do not manage development funds. The only way
of ranking senators is when one focuses on their contribution in the senate in
terms of contribution to debates and the bills they sponsor and participation
in senate committees. Pollsters in Kenya have to do a little more and carefully
consider the variables they are using as well as their sampling techniques. I
believe they have successfully managed to render themselves unreliable by
churning out baseless percentages and graphs that real do not reflect reality.
If done properly, opinion polls are an invaluable tool that shapes public
perceptions and thought processes.
For any research or
monitoring and evaluation queries, send your email to giddywafula@gmail.com
or info@translogicgroup.co.ke
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