Data Dump Friday – Just Three this Week Plus a Cleanup of the Censorship Page

Hi. I've now put all the State Department public opinion polls conducted in Iraq during 2005 up on the conflict data page. I've also cleaned up the censorship page after I realized that its organization is worse than the organization on the conflict data page. And, yes, I should unite the two pages since there …

Secret Data Sunday – Iraq Family Health Survey

The WHO-sponsored Iraq Family Health Survey (IFHS) led to a nice publication in the New England Journal of Medicine that came complete with an editorial puff piece extolling its virtues.  According to the NEJM website this publication has generated 60 citations and we're still counting.   If you cast a net wider than just medical publications then the  citation count …

The Torture Trial

I'm mesmerized by this New York Times article which shows video footage of key people testifying under oath about the US post 9/11 torture program, also known as "enhanced interrogation".  The most interesting bits are the testimony of military psychologists John Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell. The two psychologists — whom C.I.A. officials have called …

Data Dump Friday – A Film of Cats Doing Funny Things plus Somewhere Between 1 and 16 New Iraq Public Opinion Datasets

This is a great clip. Moreover, I've updated the conflict data page as is my custom on Fridays. It's hard to quantify how much is new in these additions. There is one file designated "STATE MEDIA - All Data".  Then there are a bunch of files with titles like "Media - Wasit", Media - Salah Ad …

How Many People were Killed in the Libyan Conflict – Some field work that raises more questions than it answers

Hana Salama asked me for an opinion on this article. I had missed it but it is, potentially, interesting to me so I am happy to oblige her. I've now absorbed it but find myself even more puzzled than I was after reading that Syria survey I blogged on a few weeks back.  Again, it looks like some …

Secret Data Sunday – BBC Edition Part 2 – Data Journalism without Data

Last week I described my initial attempt to obtain some Iraq survey data from the BBC. You can skip the long back story that explains my interest in these data sets if you want.  In short, though, these award-winning polls played an important role in establishing the historical record for the latest Iraq war but they …

Data Dump Friday – Four new Iraq Public Opinion Polls plus, as a Bonus, One Additional New Iraq Public Opinion Poll for a Total of Six

Here's the new conflict data page, growing longer by the week. And don't forget the twitter feed - @Michael_Spagat - from which I've been pumping out one viral tweet after another. 

The AAPOR Report on 2016 US Election Polling plus some Observations on Survey Measurement of War Deaths – Part 1

I've finally absorbed the report of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) on polling in the Trump-Clinton election.  So I'll jot down my reactions in a series of posts  (see also this earlier post).   In keeping with the spirit of the blog I'll also offer related thoughts on survey-based approaches to estimating …

Secret Data Sunday – BBC Edition Part 1

If you have spent any time on this blog you know that D3 Systems, together with KA Research Limited, fielded a lot of polls in Iraq during the occupation and that the ones I've managed to analyze show extensive evidence of containing fabricated data. Some such polls were commissioned by ABC news and won big awards. …

Data Dump Friday – Release of New Iraq Polling Datasets push Comey and British Election out of the News

I feel that I just need to keep posting datasets onto the conflict data page even at the expense of distracting from other news stories which would, otherwise, get a lot of play.