https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7643-8186
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ABSTRACT
Amid ongoing uncertainty, regular surveying in Russia continues to date and collaborations with Western academics have too. These developments offer some basis for cautious optimism. Yet they also raise critical questions about the practice of survey research in repressive environments. Are Russians less willing today to respond to surveys? Are they less willing to answer sensitive questions? How can we design research to elicit truthful responses and to know whether respondents are answering insincerely about sensitive opinions? This article lays out some of the existing evidence on these important questions. It also makes the argument that cross-fertilization with other fields can help to ensure a rigorous understanding of and response to changes in the environment for survey research in Russia.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. At least some of the initial obstacles to joint research following the imposition of Western sanctions now appear solvable in at least some instances (for example, with respect to making payment on contracts, though the situation varies by university and by state in the US and clearly the experience of US-based researchers may differ from the experience of researchers based elsewhere). Still other obstacles, such as limitations on the use of grants by some Western governments for research in Russia, remain.
2. This evidence is piecemeal, and clearly the answers may change over time.
3. Indeed, the absence of (known) evidence has sometimes been taken as evidence of declining response rates, i.e. that pollsters have something to hide.
4. To the best of my knowledge, other polling organizations with regular survey programs have not published these data. They should.
5. While obtaining a sample that is representative of the target population is key, we must at the same time keep in mind that a high-quality representative sample does not facilitate the analysis of all groups equally. To study numerically smaller groups, which may nonetheless exercise outsized political importance, specialized samples and oversamples will continue to be critical. Lazarev’s study of Chechnya (Citation2019) or Smyth’s (Citation2021) study of protesters highlight the innovative use of such sampling techniques within our field.
6. In an online sample that is younger and more educated than the population, the authors find that true support for the war is approximately 61%, compared with 71% who report support for the war when asked a direct question.
9. See https://russiawatcher.com/.
10. See also Andreenkova (Citation2019) on comparatively studying the sensitivity of survey questions.
11. See https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-do-so-many-russians-say-they-support-the-war-in-ukraine.
12. As of this writing in summer 2022, the picture appears rather more optimistic than it did just after the start of the war and imposition of sanctions. Some collaborative survey research continues, approved by university ethics boards, and opportunities to contract with and make payment to at least some Russian partners appear to have returned. Again, the situation varies by university, and researchers encounter different legal and administrative obstacles.
13. Zimmerman, William, Sharon Werning Rivera, and Kirill Kalinin. “Survey of Russian Elites, Moscow, Russia, 1993-2020.” Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor]. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03724.v7.