Innovations in MENA Survey Research in the Age of COVID (Pre-Recorded)

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose a diverse and enormous set of hurdles in front of political science scholarship, and these challenges are compounded in settings, such as the Middle East and North Africa, where research and fieldwork already faced significant logistical, methodological, ethical, political, and other barriers. Yet, as in so many domains, the exceptional changes to work and life demanded by the pandemic have also accelerated the adoption of new technologies and innovations to enable researchers to carry on their efforts to better understand society and politics in the MENA region and beyond, including the ways that social and political dynamics have been impacted by COVID itself. Notable in this regard is survey research, which circumstances have pushed toward non-traditional modes of data collection such as web surveys, surveys channeled through social media and messaging platforms, and distributed telephone surveys. These emergent approaches have in turn necessitated researchers to reconsider answers to established questions related to survey design, sampling, data quality, and many others.

This panel features recent contributions to MENA survey research that speak to both the unprecedented obstacles introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the strategies that political scientists have honed or developed to overcome limitations on, and of, conventional practices of gauging public attitudes, behaviors, and experiences in the Middle East and North Africa. Each of the papers combines aspects of methodological innovation alongside substantive insights into post-COVID dynamics across a large and diverse set of cases, spanning the Arab region, Iran, and academia itself.

Sub Unit

• Division 57: Middle East and North African Politics

Individual Presentations

• Research and Scholarship During the COVID-19 Pandemic - Gail Buttorff, University of Houston; Marwa Shalaby, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Nermin Allam, Rutgers University

• COVID-19 and Gulf Citizen Attitudes Toward Foreign Workers - Justin Gengler, SESRI, Qatar University; Lisa Blaydes, Stanford University

• COVID-19 and the 2021 Iranian Presidential Election - Daniel L. Tavana, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse; Kevan Harris

Chair

• Fotini Christia Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Discussant

• Melani Cammett Harvard University