Human Security Lab Launches ‘Afghan Voices’ Project
Human Security Lab at University of Massachusetts launched preliminary toplines from a major new public opinion survey in Afghanistan this week, detailing Afghan views on peace, security, governance and human rights across gender, linguistic, political, educational, socio-economic, geographical and religious divides. Over 20,000 Afghans from all areas of the country answered the survey, with over 3,000 completing all questions asked.
The data was collected as part of a new interdisciplinary research project by Human Security Lab Director and Political Science professor Charli Carpenter and Associate Director Professor of Psychology and Brain Sciences Bernhard Leidner. The survey follows a major report on women’s human rights in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan published earlier this year by the Lab. That report had recommended more representative data-gathering on the views of a wider range of women in that country, as well as on attitudes toward gender equality among men and Taliban supporters.
According to Professor Carpenter, the goal of the new project is to create a more evidence-based understanding of how to support Afghans and especially Afghan women. “We need to know a lot more, for example, about what Taliban-aligned women are thinking, or about what ‘gender equality’ means to older men, or about how Afghans in rural versus urban areas think about the tradeoffs between peace, security and human rights.”
In addition to a number of questions about gender equality and women’s rights, Carpenter and Leidner also polled Afghans on safety and security, governance, priorities for the future including human rights, peace, and food security, and what sort of international support they would prefer under Taliban rule, including their attitudes on the frozen Afghan national reserves.
In many cases, Afghans were invited to answer questions in their own words, rather than simply clicking a box. Human Security Lab’s summer program for undergraduates trains students to rapidly and rigorously analyze large quantities of open-ended text answers using a novel data analytics tool originally created at University of Massachusetts, DiscoverText.
The project was funded by a RAPID grant from the National Science Foundation. The Lab plans to publish a major report and multiple research papers detailing the findings of their analysis, to provide the maximum amplification to Afghan civilians’ own voices on the future of their country.
The grant funds provided money to hire a global survey consulting firm, RIWI, who has patented a novel methodology for accessing citizen opinions securely online in dangerous or difficult-to-access environments. As documented by global analytics firm Azimuth, unlike other typical sampling strategies in conflict environments, which often rely on non-representative snowball samples from the researchers’ own networks or in-person surveys that exclude difficult-to-access populations, RIWI’s online technique is able to reach as diverse an audience as possible online, capturing a random sample of all adult internet users in a geographical location.
According to Kethki Kingaonkar of RIWI, the core principle behind RIWI’s technology, called “random domain intercept technology,” is that “any Web user has a chance of randomly coming upon a RIWI survey or message test.” The firm introduces opt-in web surveys to people surfing online who find their way to websites that are dormant. This means that instead of encountering a “page does not exist” notification or an ad, a RIWI survey is rendered full-site on the page. Survey participants are accessed on all Web-enabled devices, including desktop computers, tablets, smartphones, expanding the reach of the survey to participants throughout Afghanistan, even in hard-to-access rural areas. Upon encountering the survey, individuals decided whether they would like to anonymously participate in the research. No incentives were provided, and respondents could exit the survey at any time. This methodology, Professor Carpenter explains, is particularly helpful to conflict researchers, resolving problems of security, safety, and access to diverse participants in order to assure more generalizable findings.
However, “the survey is still not representative of all Afghans,” cautions Carpenter. That is because internet users themselves are not a representative group: according to the global consulting firm Kepios, only 26% of Afghans have regular internet access and those who do are over-represented in cities, among youth and among men. But, Carpenter says, “we do at least have a random sample of those we could reach online, which captures a far more diverse set of voices than snowball sampling or many non-random web-based surveys out there.” And the survey did capture women’s voices, older voices and rural voices in smaller numbers and the result weighted mathematically against the accurate distributions of those demographics in the most recent Afghanistan census.
The new survey toplines shows that Afghans have a wide range of views on the future of their country. 34% of Afghans are strongly opposed to Taliban rule and only 23% strongly supportive. 63% of Afghans report their ability to get food was worsened either a little or a lot, with 45% reporting it has worsened a lot. A majority (52%) of Afghans say the international community should NOT recognize the Taliban unless an inclusive government is established, with only 23% saying the Taliban should be recognized and another 20% “not sure.” When it comes to physical safety, 23% of Afghans report “repression from the Taliban” as their key concern, whereas 36% say they are most worried about renewed civil war between the Taliban and opposition groups.
The country is evenly split on whether the reserves should be released (47%) or kept frozen (53%). When asked how they should be released, only 22% believe they should be released to the Taliban. 32% say they should be released to the central bank, and 34% say they should go directly to the Afghan people. 11% have a range of other ideas: one Afghan who chose none of the options presented wrote in their own words that the reserves should be spent on “funding for infrastructure projects such as the construction of a hydroelectric dam, the construction of the Salang tunnel, the digging of irrigation canals, establishment of a solar panel factory, projects that reduce poverty, create jobs, and reduce Afghanistan's dependence on foreign aid.”
The survey was particularly designed to capture and amplify women’s voices as well as to measure different Afghan men’s attitudes toward gender equality, and measure gender gaps in attitudes on safety, peace, governance, human rights and international support. Over 8,000 women from all languages, regions and socioeconomic backgrounds participated in the survey and answered questions in their own words about their hopes for the future.
The preliminary data show wide support in Afghanistan among both men and women for women’s human rights. 67% of men and 65% of women “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with the statement “I believe achieving human rights for women is among the top priorities for my country.” Interestingly, women were more likely than men to strongly disagree with this statement. Only 20% of Afghans disagreed with this, with 15% undecided.
Interestingly, when asked about the top three women’s human rights priorities, Afghan men prioritize certain rights in even greater numbers than women, including education (65% of men, only 55% of women), the right to choose a husband (38% of men, 27% of women), the right to participate in government (39% of men, 31% of women), and the right to access healthcare (36% of men, 25% of women). On the other hand, a greater number of women see the right to seek asylum as a priority for women (20%) than the number of men who see this as a priority (only 12%).
The survey also shows some other more surprising findings, including that women and men report feeling “much less safe” in approximately equal numbers, but that women are more likely to report than men that they feel “much more safe” since the Taliban took over. Women and men report supporting or opposing the Taliban in equal numbers, but men are more likely to be undecided in their support for the government.
2,523 Afghan men and 1,493 Afghan women wrote an answer in their own words to the question “what would achieving human rights for women look like to you?” This sample of answers included 1,878 men and women who oppose the Taliban, 1,290 who support the Taliban a little or a lot, and 845 Afghans who are not sure about how much they support the Taliban. While the comments have not yet been analyzed, when they are they will represent the most comprehensive and diverse data gathered since the Taliban takeover on cross-ideological Afghan views toward gender equality and the future of the country.
The team at the Lab will be analyzing the data more rigorously over the summer and fall, using both statistical and qualitative data analysis methods to determine which women feel safe and unsafe, and how women and men define security and equality in their own words, and plan to release the results later this year.