How confident are we that respondents are giving us their honest opinions, and not hiding how they really feel due to fear or other concerns?
Public opinion surveys only produce valid data if respondents can for the most part offer their honest opinions, so Afrobarometer will not conduct a survey in a country where we do not think this is possible.
There are several indicators we look for to be confident that Zimbabweans are relatively free to speak their minds, including:
1) Are there examples of criticism of government, as well as praise?
2) What do respondents themselves tell us about how free – or not – they are to speak their minds? and
3) If we’ve conducted more than one survey in a country – as we have in Zimbabwe – how well do our findings match up with other evidence, such as election outcomes, over time?
We also make every effort to encourage respondents to feel they can speak freely.
We try to match interviewers with respondents by language, we go to their homes (instead of just calling them on the phone), and we use their language where possible (Shona, Ndebele, and English in Zimbabwe).
It’s true that Zimbabweans do not express full confidence in their own ability to speak freely: Only 51% say they feel “somewhat” or “completely free” to say what they think, and only 15% feel “somewhat” or “completely free” to criticize Mugabe – these numbers are cause for concern and must be taken into account.
At the same time, 65% are willing to say that the government is doing “fairly badly” or “very badly” at managing the economy, and a remarkable 88% criticize the government’s performance in creating jobs.
In fact we find lots of evidence that people are willing and able to criticize their government during our interviews – including by saying that they are not free.
We’d also note that over the 17 years that Afrobarometer has been conducting surveys in Zimbabwe, our findings have generally tracked well with election results and other indicators.
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