Targeting the Poor in Northern Iraq: The Role of Formal and Informal Research Methods in Relief Operations

Iraq has a long history of food distribution which has generally been well managed. However, since 1992 very little has reached northern areas. This forms the backdrop to international assistance programmes, the undermining of the rural economy of Northern Iraq by forced resettlement of the Kurdish population into collective villages, and the creation of a dependence on state aid have taken place.

In this context, the authors set about testing the usefulness of formal, as distinct from informal (such as Participatory Rural Appraisal), quantitative data collection techniques for targeting relief assistance, using a survey of the region as a case study.

The authors describe the survey indicating that given the type of information required, a household expenditure survey using a random sample was considered indispensable to generate precise quantitative estimates. 2,880 households were sampled at random by bilingual food agents. To locate the poorest, formal and informal interviewing techniques were used to establish who they were, what general characteristics they shared and what they most needed to buy.

In addition to the discovery that being registered ‘displaced was the defining characteristic in access to assistance, an important finding was that a formal micro-level survey, with a properly identified sample, answering a range of questions, could lead to information about the general condition of the population as a whole.

The authors therefore concluded that a formal survey was more valuable than participatory rural appraisal for targeting purposes, because while the latter can give poor people a chance to explain their own perceptions of well-being, it could not offer information as to how people became poor and therefore in what ways assistance could be used to address longer term need.