Around twenty journalists from Burkina Faso were invited to the Center for Democratic Governance (CGD) for a workshop on the use of data from opinion surveys.

The aim of the workshop was to initiate journalists to techniques of extracting useful information from data that has been collected through the Afrobarometer network’s public opinion surveys. Afrobarometer is a network that regularly conducts surveys in about 20 Sub-Sahara African countries. Its partner in Burkina Faso is the CGD, which conducted its last survey in 2008. Afrobarometer has a partner in each of the 20 countries.

Participants benefited from basic presentations on what is an Afrobarometer survey, how it is conducted, how credible the data is, etc. Camille Quenum, head of communication at the Institute for Empirical Research in Political Economy (IREEP) and Adama Tiendrébéogo, deputy coordinator of CGD’s surveys trained representatives of the media on public opinion surveys’ techniques and insisted on using the data collected through these surveys to inform populations and question decision makers, etc. The trainers have also enabled the journalists to get acquainted with the Afrobarometer network’s online tools. The tools on the website give access to information and data for each theme, country, and type of data and also enable users to compare data between countries. The journalists appreciated the initiative. Some of them were using Afrobarometer’s website and resources for the first time. Debates focused on the sample used for the surveys and the margins of error. Participants concluded that Afrobaromenter’s surveys are conducted with scientific rigor and people appreciate that regardless of what the data reveals. The surveys cover themes such as democracy, governance, populations’ living conditions, macroeconomics, markets, participation, social capital, etc.

The workshop was also an opportunity for the Center for Democratic Governance to launch its Club of press activities. It is an informal framework of discussions and exchanges between media people around themes pertinent to good governance, democracy, participation, decentralization, etc. This club has an action plan and will develop a synergy of actions in order to improve diffusion and understanding of the stakes in good political, economic and social governance in Burkina Faso.

Survey methodology

Afrobarometer conducts individualized interviews to obtain information from respondents. The same questionnaire, that contains identical questions or functionally equivalent, is administered to all respondents in each country. The questions are standardized, thus responses can be compared between countries and across time. During the interviews, the surveyor goes to a randomly selected household to interview a person randomly selected within the household. The surveyor asks a set of questions in a face-to-face interview, in the surveyor’s language. The surveyor writes down the answers to the questions. The advantages of this methodology are that not only are the response rates usually high but also respondents have the opportunity to clarify their answers. When aggregating all responses, it is possible to make inferences on public opinion.

Source: Le Pays