Aerial view of Lagos island and Lagos harbour, Nigeria, on 17 March 2016. Photo: Getty Images.
Annex: Methodology Note
Survey design
Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has developed and adopted a National Integrated Survey of Households frame for covering all 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. This frame was used to select the Enumeration Areas (EA) and households for the survey. Forty EAs were selected per state (including Abuja, which was evaluated as a state). Fifteen households were systematically identified per EA, resulting in 600 households being selected in each state plus Abuja. The total of 4,200 households met the NBS’s empirical threshold for a robust estimate at national level.
A series of reviews with the methodology and IT team at the NBS led to the finalization of the survey instrument and its subsequent programming into the Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing application by experts from NBS. The final application was deployed on Android tablets and customized for NBS data collection alongside printed copies of selected households sheets and EA maps. Surveys were translated into 10 local languages,106 with back-translation to check for uniformity.
The scope of the survey implementation focused on the following aspects: household identification; household demography; Kish Grid method for selection of respondents within households; respondents’ basic information collection; and the administration of 25 survey questions. The format of some of the questions followed the randomized response technique and vignettes.
Survey teams
Adamawa: Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola
- Supervisor: Elizabeth Adebayo, professor of agricultural economics
- Survey Team: Philomena Mathew Demshemino, Maryam Muhammad Jika, Abba Hakim Abubakar, Mark Polycarp
Benue: Benue State University, Makurdi
- Supervisor: Dr Euginia Member George-Genyi, Department of Political Science
- Survey team: Tough Benjamin Terzungwe, Dr Rhoda Dewua Ebi, Ingyer Mercy Mnguzamber, Adole Raphael Audu
Enugu: University of Nigeria Nsukka
- Supervisor: Dr Anthony Ajah, lecturer, Humanities Unit, School of General Studies
- Survey team: Ijeoma Igwe, Elias Chukwuemeka Ngwu, Doris Ijeoma Okohu-Ajah, Chukwudi Christopher Nwokolo
Federal Capital Territory: National Bureau of Statistics
- Supervisor: Rakiya Mohammed, state officer
- Survey team: Oguniyi Fatai, Hilary Osemene, Blessing Onyechere, Usman Alhassan, Gimba Isiaku, Aishat Ahmed, Emmanuel Uzoanya
Lagos: Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University
- Supervisors: Dr Kemi Ogunyemi, senior lecturer, business ethics, managerial anthropology and sustainability management; Christopher Kolade, director, Centre for Research in Leadership and Ethics
- Survey team: Atinuke Ann Adigun, Enitan Tunde-Ibironke, Adenike Afolabi, Azeezat Ajibola
Rivers: Stakeholder Democracy Network
- Supervisor: Dr Tubodenyefa Zibima, senior project officer, environment and resource governance
- Survey team: Samuel Okpolagha-Abel, Joseph Ekiye, Joseph Paulinus Ekong, Olumide Oyebamiji
Sokoto: Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto
- Supervisor: Tukur Baba, professor, Department of Sociology
- Survey team: Hauwakulu M. Dantake, Abubakar Jibril, Amina Abdu Gusau, Muhammad Shehu
Survey completion
The survey achieved almost 99 per cent completion in the seven jurisdictions.
|
State |
Households selected |
Households visited |
% |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Adamawa |
600 |
591 |
98.5 |
|
Benue |
600 |
593 |
98.8 |
|
Enugu |
600 |
600 |
100.0 |
|
FCT |
600 |
600 |
100.0 |
|
Lagos |
600 |
600 |
100.0 |
|
Rivers |
600 |
578 |
96.3 |
|
Sokoto |
600 |
600 |
100.0 |
|
Total |
4,200 |
4,162 |
99.1 |
Survey
The survey questions were not concerned with factual events surrounding corrupt practices. Instead, as the core goal was to uncover personal and social beliefs rather than to pinpoint corrupt practices, the questions were aimed at measuring beliefs surrounding particular practices. To that end, survey implementers were trained to avoid priming particular kinds of responses from the respondents by making reference to corruption or corrupt practices.107
To introduce the survey, implementers explained that they were interested in people’s experiences with government officials and institutions in their community and everyday life. The academic expertise and field experience of the survey supervisors and implementers ensured a high standard of neutrality during the exercise.108
The survey explored the types of social norms or other motivations that influence everyday situations in Nigeria in which bribery, extortion, embezzlement and nepotism tend to occur, so as to determine if a link exists between identified norms or motivations, corrupt behaviour and public engagement in anti-corruption efforts. The word ‘corruption’ was not used in the survey, nor were ‘bribe’, ‘bribery’ or similar terms, but survey implementers made it clear to respondents that the questions concerned illegitimate informal payments. The survey investigated whether in everyday situations in which corrupt activity occurs, people believe that most people around them behave in certain ways and expect others to behave in the same way.
The local understandings, expectations and experiences survey
Survey questions
1. Traffic violations
To test the frequency of experiences, types of beliefs and behaviours that occur during vehicle checks by law enforcement agents for traffic violations, respondents were asked:
- The frequency of the experience of being stopped for a traffic violation;
- The frequency of the behaviour of asking for a direct payment109 by a law enforcement agent;
- Their expectations of the average number of people out of 10 who are asked at checkpoints for direct payments, rather than going through the official process for a traffic violation;
- Their beliefs about whether law enforcement agents should ask for a direct payment when checking for violations of traffic law;
- If they thought it was wrong for law enforcement officers to ask for a direct payment when checking for violations of traffic law;
- If they though it was illegal to ask for a direct payment in this situation;
- How many people out of 10 they thought would think other people thought that law enforcement agents should ask for a direct payment;
- How many out of 10 people they thought would say it is wrong for a law enforcement agent to ask for a direct payment instead of going through the official process for a traffic violation; and
- Their expectation of the behaviour of a law enforcement officer who has learned that almost all/very few law enforcement officers at a traffic stop ask for a direct payment and almost all/very few people in the community think it is wrong.
2. Admission in a government-run health facility
Respondents were asked:
- Whether they or a household member was admitted to a government health facility in the last 12 months;
- The frequency of being asked to pay to be admitted in a government-funded hospital; 110
- Their expectations of the average number of people out of 10 who are asked to pay for a hospital bed space;
- If they thought that government health-facility employees should ask for a direct payment for a hospital bed space;
- If they thought that it was wrong for government health-facility employees to ask for a direct payment for a hospital bed space;
- If they thought it was illegal for a government health-facility employee to ask for a direct payment for a hospital bed space;
- Whether they thought people thought that others thought that government health-facility employees should ask for a direct payment for a hospital bed space; and
- Their expectation of the behaviour of a nurse who has learned that almost all/very few nurses at a hospital ask for a direct payment and almost all/very few people in the community think it is wrong.
3. Gendered norms
This section of the survey was aimed at assessing whether expectations and judgments surrounding the corrupt practices of fraud and/or embezzlement showed any gender biases. Respondents were indirectly asked about their and others’ beliefs and expectations about corrupt practices likely to be committed or committed by a male or female protagonist in a vignette. The genders of the protagonists of the vignette were randomly assigned without the respondents knowing the other gender could equally have been assigned.
Respondents were asked about:
- The likelihood of a male or a female elected official taking government funds for personal use;
- Their personal beliefs about whether a male or a female elected official should take government funds for personal use;
- Their personal beliefs about whether it is wrong for a male or a female elected official to take government funds for personal use; and
- Whether they thought a male or a female elected official should take government funds for personal use because everybody else in that official’s position does this.
4. Local vs national social contract
The final section of the survey was designed to measure people’s beliefs and expectations of a protagonist in a vignette who had been recently appointed as a federal minister. The name of the protagonist was randomly selected so that it corresponded or did not correspond with the respondents’ own ethno-religious grouping.
Respondents were asked about:
- The likelihood of someone in or out of their community helping someone else in or out of their community to get a job in the protagonist’s ministry;
- Whether someone in or out of their community should help someone else in or out of their community to get a job in the protagonist’s ministry because it is the ‘right’ thing to do;
- Whether it would be wrong for someone in or out of their community to help someone else in or out of their community to get a job in the protagonist’s ministry; and
- Whether someone in or out of their community should help someone else in or of out of their community to get a job in the protagonist’s ministry because this was a practice everybody engaged in.111
106 The survey was translated and administered in the following languages: Fulfulde, Hausa, Idoma, Igbo, Igede, Ikwere, Ogoni (Khana), Pidgin English, Tiv, Yoruba.
107 The survey was conducted with a social-desirability bias in mind. The social-desirability bias is the tendency for survey respondents to provide the answers they think are appropriate in a given situation – i.e. that are ‘correct’ (morally or legally, for example) rather than a reflection of their beliefs. Specifically, survey questions concerning potentially sensitive topics were designed to be impersonal, using vignettes to elicit as best a reflection of the true beliefs of the respondents as possible. Separate questions were specifically targeted at eliciting respondents’ beliefs about the moral and legal beliefs (i.e. the questions were crafted in a way that allowed separate analysis of different types of beliefs). See Bicchieri, Lindemans and Jiang (2014), ‘A structured approach to a diagnostic of collective practices’.
108 Experienced NBS field supervisors monitored the survey exercise in each state and the FCT to ensure the strict adherence to survey instructions and protocol.
109 Care was taken during the survey process to avoid explicit use of words such as ‘bribe’, ‘bribery’ or ‘corruption’, or any local variants of these terms. Survey questions and vignettes referred to a ‘direct payment [to a law enforcement official]’, and similar phrasing. Survey implementers made it clear to respondents that the questions and vignettes concerned an illegitimate informal payment.
110 Care was taken during the survey process to avoid explicit use of words such as ‘bribe’, ‘bribery’ or ‘corruption’, or any local variants of these terms. Survey implementers made it clear to respondents that the questions and vignettes concerned an illegitimate payment – i.e. an informal payment in order to receive a hospital bed.
111 The study did not find a statistically significant effect for the last set of in-group/out-group questions, perhaps because difficulties were encountered in the randomization of names necessary for the question to reflect perceivable religious or ethnic differences.