Quality of life survey 2

In 2009, GCRO commissioned its first ‘Quality of Life’ survey, in order to analyse the quality of life of citizens, identify key areas and groups needing intervention and support, and provide an holistic assessment of life in the Gauteng City-region – not just looking at Gross Domestic Product, or Value Add, or similar economic measures, but including the values and attitudes of citizens, their levels of social capital, alienation, anomie, and so on. The survey, because of both the sample size and breadth, and quality of analysis, had a considerable impact on government’s work, as well as enjoying significant media coverage.

In 2011, GCRO ran a highly competitive tender process and awarded the fieldwork contract for the second Quality of Life survey. This time round, the sample has increased from less than seven thousand to more than seventeen thousand respondents, primarily due to the new technology (digital pens) used by DataWorld. What this means is that we could stratify the sample from ward level upwards, rather than metro/municipal level as previously – and of course we can analyse back down to that same level.

The data, from this mammoth sample, which were cleaned and tidied by Ross Jennings on GCRO’s behalf and Adhir Nursayhe from DataWorld, should be ready for initial (topline) analysis in February and we hope to launch in March 2012. 

Of course, a fieldwork outing of this scale throws into harsh relief the challenges of doing fieldwork in the Gauteng City-region. One ward, from Midvaal, has no respondents whatsoever – after over 80 attempts to get access to gated communities (with attendant domestic work facilities), with fieldworkers (of all races) escorted out at gun-point, we simply gave up. Elsewhere, some mine-managers for example continued to act as if they ruled fiefdoms, telling us when and who we could talk to – or more commonly, not talk to – making random sampling impossible. Again, this led to substitution. 

In the end, a cluster of fieldwork houses were used to patch together the very large sample, but the fieldwork phase should remind us of the inequities and brutalities of the past, where groups of people assumed they could tell others what to do, where to assemble, where to research, as if democracy had not occurred, and freedom of movement and association not constitutionally guaranteed.