27,000,000 x 0.24 / 10 = 648000
One of those fifth anniversary surveys, asks a number of questions, but look at Q20. Apparently, 24% of Iraqis answered "yes" to the question "Have you personally experienced the murder of a member of your family or relative since the invasion in 2003?". If we were to assume that no families in Iraq had more than one member murdered, for this response to be consistent with an overall violent death count of 150,000, the average size of an Iraqi family would have to be 35.
Mind you, the poll is dodgy - 10% of Iraqis claim to have personally seen a car bomb or suicide attack in the last month, but this is clearly impossible because the surge is working.
the average size of an Iraqi family would have to be 35.
ReplyDeleteIt might be though, mightn't it? Or even substantially larger, depending on what the respondent meant by "family".
depending on what the respondent meant by "family"
ReplyDeleteQuite, and it did ask "family OR relative". Further it doesn't seem unlikely the respondants would include matri- or patrilineal cousins with the definition of "family". Its an acultural assumption of your part that all families are nuclear ones.
ORB's opinion polls found 26% of people knew a 'family member/relative' had been killed, and then in a later poll (presumably to different people) when they changed it to the more specific 'household' it fell to 23%. So that suggests the two aren't that different, so we're talking a family/relative size of 6 (the normal household size) plus a bit - so 7/8?
ReplyDeleteThe car bomb/suicide bombing result is strange as I think a smaller proportion say they have ever seen such a thing as those who say they saw it in the last month.
ReplyDeleteIt might be something to do with double answers - I'm not sure in the family member murdered question whether those who answered 'a friend or colleague' are addition to the 'family/relative' or mixed up with them.
Polls eh? You know less after you read 'em then you did before.
ReplyDeleteFurther evidence that the polls are dodgy is that majorities of Iraqis say that the surge has not worked and has made the situation worse. But I read on the internet that the only people who think that are far left extremists and terrorists.
ReplyDeleteWell, the Iraqis are mostly Arabs and almost all Muslims, so they're pretty much by definition terrorists. If they weren't, we wouldn't have had to invade their country.
ReplyDeleteCould easily be 35 - if your average Iraqi married couple has four kids, say, your family could consist of
ReplyDeleteme and the wife
our four kids
the wife's three siblings
their three spouses
and their twelve kids
my three siblings
their three spouses
and their twelve kids
my mum and dad
the wife's mum and dad
my uncles and aunts, and their spouses
the wife's uncles and aunts, and their spouses
all my cousins
all the wife's cousins
... well over 60, not counting grandparents! Personally, counting only the connections given above, I have a family of 29.
Remember that all of these calculations were done on the basis that no family in Iraq had more than one death in it, so you are actually going to need a substantially greater margin of safety here.
ReplyDeleteDid we cover two or more respondents being part of the same family?
ReplyDeleteI agree with commenters above "family or relative" is too vague.
ReplyDeleteIn the most recent survey with which I am familiar (estimated death total about one million) the question made it quite clear that only violent deaths of people who slept under the same roof as the interviewed person were to be reported. This is pretty much what you would get from this survey using the household question.
However, the very small change from "family or relative" to "household" by itself, implies that the results are dodgy.
Aside from jokes like "the surge is working," the claim about personally seen car bombs and/or suicide attacks are clearly false (unless they meant they heard the explosion and saw smoke or that they saw damage well after the explosion).