I. Introduction & Literature Review
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization classified the COVID-19 virus as a pandemic virus that originated in China and soon spread to other countries. After that, the world entered a pandemic crisis. My country, Iran, is one of the countries that was greatly affected by this global shock. The World Health Organization recognized Iran as a high-risk country (Duddu, 2020). In the meantime, a lot of contradictory news and information was published, and many experts were looking for the answer to why this epidemic spread so rapidly in Iran. That was the main question. After that, attention was focused on the extent to which the Iranian government is responsible for this expansion. Did the government's mismanagement cause the virus to go out of control? Are the numbers given out by the Iranian regime true? Are the people to blame because they do not take the restrictions seriously? Most experts are looking for answers to these questions.
Since I am a patriotic Iranian who cares about the health of the people of my country, and more importantly because of my knowledge of the nature of this dictatorial regime and its covert policies, I decided to arrange a survey from my friends and relatives in Iran.
The purpose of this survey was to be able to examine the opinion of a part of the people about the Corona crisis in Iran, and thus to use the statistics to generalize the results to the whole society. Of course, with the knowledge that due to the small number of participants, correct and accurate result cannot be obtained.
According to the generalization law, a survey of a small community can be generalized to the whole community. Therefore, I decided to ask a few questions and ask a small group of Iranians about the Corona crisis in Iran. I distributed this questionnaire to 25 people online (due to quarantine conditions) and received 10 samples from them.
Except for general questions about participants' initial information, four basic questions were addressed in this questionnaire. Is the Iranian regime is to blame for the spread of the coronavirus? Is Iran hiding the statistics of those killed? Are the people to blame people for spreading the virus?
Because the Iranian regime is known as a dictatorial government in the world, and it has not always been transparent in various cases with the Western world and the international community. Many experts and even the international community believe that the government has been slow to act and has delayed the announcement of the Corona outbreak in Iran, and is hiding the death toll. A growing number of analysts and physicians have questioned Tehran’s death toll tallies and they believe that Iran’s leaders would often conceal outbreaks of corona from the Iranian people and the international community to protect their personal political and economic interests. (Afkhami, 2020). US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says, Iranian officials have covered up the facts about the coronavirus. He told reporters at a news conference in Washington that he had information that the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran had "important details" about the outbreak of the coronavirus, but declined to comment. Expressing concern over the issue, he called on Iranian officials to tell the truth about the virus (Pompeo: Iran, 2020).
Therefore, I have chosen this topic, to dive deep into it and do a statistical survey, to come up with the questions raised.
II. Measurement - Reliability & Validity
One of the determining criteria in the survey is the ability to measure and ensure its reliability and validity. Reliability is the degree to which a tool creates consistent results. While reliability is necessary, it alone is not enough. In addition to being reliable, an experiment must be valid (Phelan, C. & Wren, J. 2005-06). In my survey the measurement was designed with a specific purpose, so all questions had a specific goal behind them. You can see the questionnaire handed to the participants below this page. The questions started with basic questions such as gender, age, education, followed by content questions appropriate to the subject of the survey. The question of whether people work in health care centers was important because it is a contagious disease, so it is important to know whether the person is directly involved or not.
The question of how much people agree with the government determines the percentage of the people (in my survey) that agree or disagree with the regime. This question determines the general view of the Iranian regime and directs the answer to the following questions. The main questions are actually the last four questions that enter the target content of the survey. Which focuses on the results of this survey.
The validity and reliability of this research was obtained from repetition and evaluation along with evidence.Getting the same results over multiple surveys gave reliability to my survey. Responses were more consistent across the samples, therefore data became more reliable to generalize to a bigger population.
Among the questions posed, an attempt was made to import all types of variables (one variable - two variables and more), all types of data (Categorical - Numerical) and types of measurements (Nominal - Interval). Therefore, the relationship of questions was crucial for analysis and summarizing (Validity, 2019). In addition, the final four key questions raised the credibility of the poll. Moreover, by establishing a relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variables in coordination with each other, I ensured the results of the survey. I also tried to enter a neutral option so that the poll would not be biased.
Questionnaire for Covid-19 outbreak in Iran Survey
Name:
Please check one box for each question
Q1: what is your gender?
¨ Male
¨ Female
Q2: How old are you?
¨ 18 – 30
¨ 31 – 50
¨ 51 & up
Q3: What is your level of education?
¨ High School
¨ Undergraduate
¨ Post Graduate
Q4: Do you work in the medical industry?
¨ Yes
¨ No
Q5: Do you agree with the current government?
¨ Strongly disagree
¨ Disagree
¨ Neither agree nor disagree
¨ Agree
¨ Strongly agree
Q6: Is the government responsible for the Covid-19 outbreak?
¨ Yes
¨ Neutral
¨ No
Q7: Are the given numbers from the authorities real?
¨ Yes
¨ No
¨ Not sure
¨ To some extent
Q8: If the above answer is “No” or to “Some extent”, how many people do you think have died until now?
¨ <5000
¨ 5000 - 9000
¨ 9001 - 15000
¨ >15000
Q9: What percent of the population complied with the rules to help control the virus?
¨ <50%
¨ >50%
III. Hypotheses
For scientific reasoning, my hypothesis is the assumption made before any research was completed. Below are the questions, which I made a hypothesis for:
Do you agree with the current government? Most will definitely disagree, as seen until now, the distrust and dislike towards the government is high, so I don’t think there will be anyone in favor of the government directly.
Is the government responsible for the Covid-19 outbreak? There will be a split opinion on this, according to my focus group study. Some people will the population not the government.
Are the given numbers from the authorities real? I’m pretty sure the majority agree that the numbers given by authorities are not real and have not been truly announced for economic benefits.
What percent of the population complied with the rules to help control the virus? This is where I again expect to be a split between the samples. People are divided on this question.
IV. Advantages & Disadvantages of the Survey Design
Because the survey is a method of collecting data to achieve a specific goal and conclusion from a set of information and is generally done by a group of people, it is very sensitive and complex at the same time. The design of each survey may have strengths and weaknesses that need to be considered (Sincero, 2018).
My survey advantage was that it was low cost. Because I prepared the questionnaire online and distributed it online among people.
The second advantage and I think the important one was that I used the online method in my survey; the participants also welcomed this method because it was easy for them to answer. They answered questions in just 10 minutes or less. Due to this, participants filled in and delivered the survey whenever they had time and without stress. Of course, it is worth mentioning that they had 3 days to respond. According to Sincero (2018), “nowadays, the online survey method has been the most popular way of gathering data from target participants. Aside from the convenience of data gathering, researchers are able to collect data from people around the globe”.
The second advantage was that in my survey I was able to connect online to a small group of Iranians who are clearly at the heart of the Corona crisis, thus ensuring that the results of my research are close to reality. I also tried to get people who work in medical centers to participate in the survey.
The third advantage was that the questions were short and precise at the same time and did not leave any ambiguity in answering for the participants.
In my opinion, asking question 8 following question 7 was very crucial because it increased the accuracy of the answer and was helpful for further statistics and calculations.
Undoubtedly, my poll also had many shortcomings.
The first disadvantage of the survey was that there was little flexibility in asking questions. This means that the questions were clichéd and did not use descriptive or descriptive questions. Therefore, participants were limited to responding in the same specific context.
The second weakness was that the number of questions asked was small because more questions needed to be asked to get the right and accurate result. Therefore, not all aspects of the issue were addressed in these questions.
The third weakness was that because the Corona issue in Iran is a controversial and somewhat a political issue, participants might not answer it accurately. According to Sincero (2018), the truth in controversial debates may not be as clear as when using alternative methods of data collection, such as face-to-face interviews and focus groups.
In my opinion, it was wrong to ask the question that determined the political position of the participants because the participants were in Iran and since they are always afraid of expressing their political opinions, I could ask the question indirectly due to the dictatorial atmosphere in Iran. At the same time, knowing the political position of the participants in advancing the subject of the poll was not very decisive.
Finally, to ensure the strengths and weaknesses of the survey, I asked the participants to send me the pros and cons. Therefore, these advantages and disadvantages are not just my personal opinion.
V. Sample
The survey was taken in Iran, given to almost 25 people, and I received 10 completed surveys. Different age groups participated in the survey. People with secondary and higher education participated in the survey. Variety in age and education led to the diversity in the views of different sections of the survey. In particular, efforts were made to use people who worked in medical centers in the survey, albeit in small numbers. In addition, the samples held different political views, so it was a good percent of people to be able to generalize.
I continued the questionnaire by asking questions about the role of people in the spread of the disease. At first, I preferred not to ask this question because it is an issue that is directly related to people's health, death, and life, and it is unlikely that people themselves will not take care of their own health. However, because I had studied it previous researches, of how people did not take these conditions seriously, I decided to ask a question to get a more accurate answer.
What gives credibility to the research is that the participants are clearly from inside Iran and from different backgrounds and with different level of socioeconomic and education. Participants include employees of medical centers, students, company managers, simple employees, housewives, freelancers more...
VI. Analysis
My analysis was done in Excel. However, because of some limitations in Excel, I am also using the analysis done in SPSS. All Excel sheets are provided with this project. Below are the pictures of the sheets, so please refer to the original Excel sheets attached for viewing the formulas and the work done. First are the Excel ones, then the SPSS ones.
All sorts of analysis were done, one variable and two variable, categorical and numerical, using Chi square, Means and Dev, Correlation, ANOVA, graphs, and all others.
VII. Discussion & Conclusions
After a long research, surveys, and analysis, I have reached some results that parts of it support my hypothesis, and other parts don’t. The major findings of my study was that the majority think the government is to blame for the Covid-19 outbreak. This was the main argument and upon receiving repeated results from the samples, I can conclude and generalize the samples to a bigger audience, resulting in “the government is responsible for the outbreak in Iran”.
Picking precise questions to first find out if the sample is biased or not, then asking the questions to collect data, I do think I have enough supportive evidence to claim that the general population in Iran blames the government and not the people for the Covid-19 outbreak. The majority doesn’t trust the numbers given by authorities, and the samples claim that the death toll is almost triple the numbers announced.
Although there were some limitations of my findings, and I have to say I cannot conclude based on the data I have from the small sample, but it was a starting point. The first limitation was the fact that people in Iran are afraid to openly tell the truth or speak about what goes on in Iran, so some samples might have lied based on fear of opposing the regime. Therefore, this was a major concern in my data, and I wasn’t able to verify this. But I can say that in between my samples, most spoke the truth they had seen or were knowledge about.
I think for further studies in this field, and to validate my data, a good way would be to repeat the survey after some time, and compare the results. My studies did relate to my previous studies and research I did, but surprisingly there was no debate over the fact that who was responsible. In my previous studies, people disagreed to blame the government or the population.
The main question result: Is the government responsible for the Covid-19 outbreak?
Yes
80%
No
0%
Neutral
20%
Total
100%
All findings and conclusions were based on the correlation of previous questions and the main questions to be able to realize if the samples are responding in a biased manner or a scientifically knowledge manner. My data supports my conclusions, and all analysis’s are attached in the project. The hypothesis of the main conclusion is well supported.
Obtained results show that in statistically significant means, there is a very high likelihood that the data measured was not the result of random responses, and prove the assumed hypothesis.
The data obtained from the survey didn’t surprise me, and I was expecting to see this kind of data and a high majority blaming the government. Even though it was data from a survey, it does also support the saddening truth of the behavior of the regime in Iran towards the people.
In total, the project took seven days of work, day and night, apart from the three days the participants had to fill the survey. The project lasted 10 days in total.
References
Afkhami, A. (2020). Why Iran Is Such a Coronavirus Threat. Washington and the World.
Retrieved from https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/03/iran-used-to-be-better-at-handling-epidemics-then-came-coronavirus-119651
Corona in Iran. (2020). Half of the People on Preliminary Surveys and Powerful Sports. Bbc
Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran-52229483
Duddu, P. (2020). COVID-19 in Iran: Coronavirus outbreak, measures and impact.
Pharmaceutical-technology. Retrieved from www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/iran-coronavirus-covid-19-death-toll-cases-ncov-measures-
Fard, B. (2020). Corona and the Secret Management of the Islamic Republic. Iran global.
Retrieved from https://iranglobal.info/node/77614
Pompeo: Iran hides about coronavirus. (2020). Dw. Retrieved from www.dw.com/fa-ir
Phelan, C. & Wren, J. (2005-06). UNI Office of Academic Assessment. chfasoa. Retrieved from
Sincero, S. (2018). Advantages and Disadvantages of Surveys. explorable. Retrieved from
Validity. (2019). Validity in Qualitative Research. Statistics solutions. Retrieved from
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