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Friday 17th July, 13:00 - 14:30 Room: HT-104


The Nimble Survey Methodology in Addressing Humanitarian Emergencies 2

Convenor Dr Asaph Young Chun (US Census Bureau and ASA Statistics Without Borders )
Coordinator 1Dr Fritz Scheuren (NORC at the University of Chicago)
Coordinator 2Professor James Cochran (University of Alabama)

Session Details

Could survey methodology be agile enough to help resolve humanitarian crises that have fast and lasting impacts on many people's lives? This session is devoted to discussing survey methodology that has played a vital role in efforts to resolve acute humanitarian crises affecting the disadvantaged people disproportionately.

The papers relevant to this session include, but are not limited to the following: health surveys of the disadvantaged people, such as children, women and disabled population in hard-to-access countries; survey studies leveraging SNS tools for the humanitarian disaster response; and agile surveys supplemented by administrative records and/or big data addressing humanitarian interventions. We are open to accepting case studies that leveraged interdisciplinary survey methodology to address human right issues in developing countries. Research papers in this session use survey methodology and interdisciplinary thinking to assist Non-Governmental Organizations and/or UN agencies in addressing current humanitarian crises or human rights.

Papers encouraged to submit include innovative studies demonstrating how survey research has led to nimble policy decisions that help save many people's lives and/or improve quality of life of the disadvantaged people in developing countries. Submissions of interests are agile survey research that promoted synergy of academics, NGOs and UN agencies as well as governmental agencies to help develop humanitarian interventions. This session should be of interest to most ESRA participants and to those who are involved or wish to be involved with survey methodology applied to humanitarian efforts or human rights across the globe.

Paper Details

1. survey of attitudes and expectation about post-conflict in Colombia.
Mr Daniel Guzman (University of Michigan)

Colombia is in the midst of peace negotiations with the most enduring guerrilla organization in Latin-America. The goal of the survey is to present the attitudes towards the post-conflict. Previous surveys have used area probability design; because the proportion of victims is small, it would be too expensive to use this approach to select the sample. We proposed to enhance design by including two features: 1) including administrative victims records, and 2) to use an adaptive design, where the selection rate for victims is monitored and modified during data collection to obtain the desired sample.


2. Statistics Without Borders and Case Studies: Can Survey Methods Be Agile Enough to Help Resolve Humanitarian Emergencies?
Dr Asaph Young Chun (US Census Bureau; Statistics Without Borders of American Statistical Association)
Mr Justin Fisher (US Government Accountability Office)
Mrs Nilupa Gunaratna (Harvard University School of Public Health)
Mr Gary Shapiro (Statistics Without Borders of American Statistical Association)

Could survey methodology make an agile impact enough to help humanitarian agencies make evidence-driven decisions? In response to this intriguing question of "swift and real impacts," volunteers of Statistics Without Borders (SWB), an official outreach group of the American Statistical Association, provide pro bono survey methodology consulting to organizations across the world that serve disadvantaged people.The purpose of this paper is to discuss data challenges in humanitarian crisis, and present agile survey methods applied to help non-governmental agencies and UN organizations develop data-driven interventions.



3. A Glimpse of Self-Esteem of People in North Korea: Challenges and Lessons Learned from the First Self-administered Survey in Country
Mrs Cindy Won (International Strategy and Reconciliation Foundation)
Mrs Elena Zafarana (Pyongyang Summer Institute in Survey Science)
Mr Elliott Chun (International Strategy and Reconciliation Foundation)
Mrs Clara Kyung (International Strategy and Reconciliation Foundation)
Mrs Catherine Myong (Harvard University)
Mrs Jacquelyn Pennings (Elite Research)
Mr Rene Paulson (Elite Research)
Dr Asaph Young Chun (Statistics Without Borders of American Statistical Association)

The Pyongyang Summer Institute in Survey Science (PSI) was launched in 2012 as an interdisciplinary teaching program of survey methods offered for university students in North Korea. The summer institute brought together 13 scholars to do pro bono teaching of survey methodology. The PSI faculty conducted a self-administered survey of all students, assessing their self-esteem based on the Ronsenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the most widely-used self-esteem measure in social research. The survey data provide a glimpse of self-esteem, for the first time in North Korea history, of how people in North Korea perceive themselves.