Graham Blair
Biographic Data
| ID | 708367 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Graham Blair |
| GIVEN NAMES | Graham |
| FAMILY NAME | Blair |
| SIGNATURE | BLAIR G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Los Angeles |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9164-2102 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 837 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The Point of Attack
Field Experiments in the Global South
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
How Does Armed Conflict Shape Investment? Evidence from the Mining Sector
How does conflict affect firms' investment decisions? Past results are mixed: a third of the studies we reviewed report null or mixed correlations; some suggest that conflict increases investment. We rationalize these results, arguing that armed conflict has divergent effects depending on firms' exposure to violence. Conflict can deter investment by disrupting production or raising uncertainty. Yet, conflict can encourage investment by hampering …
Field Experiments in the Global South
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have emerged as a leading methodological tool to strengthen causal inference in the social sciences. Yet RCTs carry significant risks for ev- eryone involved, from participants to researchers themselves, especially in the Global South. In this article, we explore how researchers’ identities and power influence the conduct of research and their positionality within the research contexts—especially when conductin…
Community policing does not build citizen trust in police or reduce crime in the Global South
Easier said than done High-profile instances of police brutality in the last few years have brought attention to patterns of abuse that have existed since the inception of modern policing. There have been many calls for police reform, a process that in many countries has taken the form of increased police engagement with communities. Blair et al . report the results of a large-scale experiment testing the effectiveness of this approach across six…
Do Commodity Price Shocks Cause Armed Conflict? A Meta-Analysis of Natural Experiments
Scholars of the resource curse argue that reliance on primary commodities destabilizes governments: price fluctuations generate windfalls or periods of austerity that provoke or intensify civil conflict. Over 350 quantitative studies test this claim, but prominent results point in different directions, making it difficult to discern which results reliably hold across contexts. We conduct a meta-analysis of 46 natural experiments that use differen…
When to Worry about Sensitivity Bias
Eliciting honest answers to sensitive questions is frustrated if subjects withhold the truth for fear that others will judge or punish them. The resulting bias is commonly referred to as social desirability bias, a subset of what we label sensitivity bias. We make three contributions. First, we propose a social reference theory of sensitivity bias to structure expectations about survey responses on sensitive topics. Second, we explore the bias-va…
List Experiments with Measurement Error
Measurement error threatens the validity of survey research, especially when studying sensitive questions. Although list experiments can help discourage deliberate misreporting, they may also suffer from nonstrategic measurement error due to flawed implementation and respondents’ inattention. Such error runs against the assumptions of the standard maximum likelihood regression (MLreg) estimator for list experiments and can result in misleading in…
Declaring and Diagnosing Research Designs
Researchers need to select high-quality research designs and communicate those designs clearly to readers. Both tasks are difficult. We provide a framework for formally "declaring" the analytically relevant features of a research design in a demonstrably complete manner, with applications to qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research. The approach to design declaration we describe requires defining a model of the world (M), an inquiry …
The Audio Check
Data quality and trust in the data collection process are critical concerns in survey research, particularly when surveyors are needed for reaching “diverse and inconvenient subject pools.” In response to irregularities in a smartphone-based pilot survey data collection in Nigeria, we developed an audio check method that unobtrusively recorded surveyors reading aloud questions to participants. We present evidence that this method detected wholesa…
Comparing and Combining List and Endorsement Experiments
List and endorsement experiments are becoming increasingly popular among social scientists as indirect survey techniques for sensitive questions. When studying issues such as racial prejudice and support for militant groups, these survey methodologies may improve the validity of measurements by reducing nonresponse and social desirability biases. We develop a statistical test and multivariate regression models for comparing and combining the resu…
Poverty and Support for Militant Politics
Policy debates on strategies to end extremist violence frequently cite poverty as a root cause of support for the perpetrating groups. There is little evidence to support this contention, particularly in the Pakistani case. Pakistan's urban poor are more exposed to the negative externalities of militant violence and may in fact be less supportive of the groups. To test these hypotheses we conducted a 6,000‐person, nationally representative survey…
Explaining Support for Combatants during Wartime
How are civilian attitudes toward combatants affected by wartime victimization? Are these effects conditional on which combatant inflicted the harm? We investigate the determinants of wartime civilian attitudes towards combatants using a survey experiment across 204 villages in five Pashtun-dominated provinces of Afghanistan-the heart of the Taliban insurgency. We use endorsement experiments to indirectly elicit truthful answers to sensitive ques…
Statistical Analysis of List Experiments
The validity of empirical research often relies upon the accuracy of self-reported behavior and beliefs. Yet eliciting truthful answers in surveys is challenging, especially when studying sensitive issues such as racial prejudice, corruption, and support for militant groups. List experiments have attracted much attention recently as a potential solution to this measurement problem. Many researchers, however, have used a simple difference-in-means…
Reel-to-Reel Recordings of American and British Songs, Ballads, and Instrumentals Performed by Toru Mitsui in 1963-1966, in JapanReel-to-Reel Recordings of American and British Songs, Ballads, and Ins…
This DOI is not currently attached to any metadata records. DOIs can’t actually ever be deleted (they’re persistent), but sometimes our members create DOIs in error. We do have a process to approximate deletion which we follow only in rare cases where the DOI has been genuinely created in error, and most crucially, if the DOI has never been published anywhere online or in print and never otherwise distributed to or communicated with anyone (autho…
Statistical Analysis of List Experiments
The validity of empirical research often relies upon the accuracy of self-reported behavior and beliefs. Yet eliciting truthful answers in surveys is challenging, especially when studying sensitive issues such as racial prejudice, corruption, and support for militant groups. List experiments have attracted much attention recently as a potential solution to this measurement problem. Many researchers, however, have used a simple difference-in-means…
Explaining Support for Combatants during Wartime
How are civilian attitudes toward combatants affected by wartime victimization? Are these effects conditional on which combatant inflicted the harm? We investigate the determinants of wartime civilian attitudes towards combatants using a survey experiment across 204 villages in five Pashtun-dominated provinces of Afghanistan-the heart of the Taliban insurgency. We use endorsement experiments to indirectly elicit truthful answers to sensitive ques…
When to Worry about Sensitivity Bias
Eliciting honest answers to sensitive questions is frustrated if subjects withhold the truth for fear that others will judge or punish them. The resulting bias is commonly referred to as social desirability bias, a subset of what we label sensitivity bias. We make three contributions. First, we propose a social reference theory of sensitivity bias to structure expectations about survey responses on sensitive topics. Second, we explore the bias-va…
Poverty and Support for Militant Politics
Policy debates on strategies to end extremist violence frequently cite poverty as a root cause of support for the perpetrating groups. There is little evidence to support this contention, particularly in the Pakistani case. Pakistan's urban poor are more exposed to the negative externalities of militant violence and may in fact be less supportive of the groups. To test these hypotheses we conducted a 6,000‐person, nationally representative survey…
Comparing and Combining List and Endorsement Experiments
List and endorsement experiments are becoming increasingly popular among social scientists as indirect survey techniques for sensitive questions. When studying issues such as racial prejudice and support for militant groups, these survey methodologies may improve the validity of measurements by reducing nonresponse and social desirability biases. We develop a statistical test and multivariate regression models for comparing and combining the resu…
Declaring and Diagnosing Research Designs
Researchers need to select high-quality research designs and communicate those designs clearly to readers. Both tasks are difficult. We provide a framework for formally "declaring" the analytically relevant features of a research design in a demonstrably complete manner, with applications to qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research. The approach to design declaration we describe requires defining a model of the world (M), an inquiry …
Do Commodity Price Shocks Cause Armed Conflict? A Meta-Analysis of Natural Experiments
Scholars of the resource curse argue that reliance on primary commodities destabilizes governments: price fluctuations generate windfalls or periods of austerity that provoke or intensify civil conflict. Over 350 quantitative studies test this claim, but prominent results point in different directions, making it difficult to discern which results reliably hold across contexts. We conduct a meta-analysis of 46 natural experiments that use differen…
List Experiments with Measurement Error
Measurement error threatens the validity of survey research, especially when studying sensitive questions. Although list experiments can help discourage deliberate misreporting, they may also suffer from nonstrategic measurement error due to flawed implementation and respondents’ inattention. Such error runs against the assumptions of the standard maximum likelihood regression (MLreg) estimator for list experiments and can result in misleading in…
How Does Armed Conflict Shape Investment? Evidence from the Mining Sector
How does conflict affect firms' investment decisions? Past results are mixed: a third of the studies we reviewed report null or mixed correlations; some suggest that conflict increases investment. We rationalize these results, arguing that armed conflict has divergent effects depending on firms' exposure to violence. Conflict can deter investment by disrupting production or raising uncertainty. Yet, conflict can encourage investment by hampering …
Field Experiments in the Global South
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have emerged as a leading methodological tool to strengthen causal inference in the social sciences. Yet RCTs carry significant risks for ev- eryone involved, from participants to researchers themselves, especially in the Global South. In this article, we explore how researchers’ identities and power influence the conduct of research and their positionality within the research contexts—especially when conductin…
Reel-to-Reel Recordings of American and British Songs, Ballads, and Instrumentals Performed by Toru Mitsui in 1963-1966, in JapanReel-to-Reel Recordings of American and British Songs, Ballads, and Ins…
This DOI is not currently attached to any metadata records. DOIs can’t actually ever be deleted (they’re persistent), but sometimes our members create DOIs in error. We do have a process to approximate deletion which we follow only in rare cases where the DOI has been genuinely created in error, and most crucially, if the DOI has never been published anywhere online or in print and never otherwise distributed to or communicated with anyone (autho…
Statistical Analysis of List Experiments
The validity of empirical research often relies upon the accuracy of self-reported behavior and beliefs. Yet eliciting truthful answers in surveys is challenging, especially when studying sensitive issues such as racial prejudice, corruption, and support for militant groups. List experiments have attracted much attention recently as a potential solution to this measurement problem. Many researchers, however, have used a simple difference-in-means…
Poverty and Support for Militant Politics
Policy debates on strategies to end extremist violence frequently cite poverty as a root cause of support for the perpetrating groups. There is little evidence to support this contention, particularly in the Pakistani case. Pakistan's urban poor are more exposed to the negative externalities of militant violence and may in fact be less supportive of the groups. To test these hypotheses we conducted a 6,000‐person, nationally representative survey…
Explaining Support for Combatants during Wartime
How are civilian attitudes toward combatants affected by wartime victimization? Are these effects conditional on which combatant inflicted the harm? We investigate the determinants of wartime civilian attitudes towards combatants using a survey experiment across 204 villages in five Pashtun-dominated provinces of Afghanistan-the heart of the Taliban insurgency. We use endorsement experiments to indirectly elicit truthful answers to sensitive ques…
Comparing and Combining List and Endorsement Experiments
List and endorsement experiments are becoming increasingly popular among social scientists as indirect survey techniques for sensitive questions. When studying issues such as racial prejudice and support for militant groups, these survey methodologies may improve the validity of measurements by reducing nonresponse and social desirability biases. We develop a statistical test and multivariate regression models for comparing and combining the resu…
The Audio Check
Data quality and trust in the data collection process are critical concerns in survey research, particularly when surveyors are needed for reaching “diverse and inconvenient subject pools.” In response to irregularities in a smartphone-based pilot survey data collection in Nigeria, we developed an audio check method that unobtrusively recorded surveyors reading aloud questions to participants. We present evidence that this method detected wholesa…
List Experiments with Measurement Error
Measurement error threatens the validity of survey research, especially when studying sensitive questions. Although list experiments can help discourage deliberate misreporting, they may also suffer from nonstrategic measurement error due to flawed implementation and respondents’ inattention. Such error runs against the assumptions of the standard maximum likelihood regression (MLreg) estimator for list experiments and can result in misleading in…
Declaring and Diagnosing Research Designs
Researchers need to select high-quality research designs and communicate those designs clearly to readers. Both tasks are difficult. We provide a framework for formally "declaring" the analytically relevant features of a research design in a demonstrably complete manner, with applications to qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research. The approach to design declaration we describe requires defining a model of the world (M), an inquiry …
When to Worry about Sensitivity Bias
Eliciting honest answers to sensitive questions is frustrated if subjects withhold the truth for fear that others will judge or punish them. The resulting bias is commonly referred to as social desirability bias, a subset of what we label sensitivity bias. We make three contributions. First, we propose a social reference theory of sensitivity bias to structure expectations about survey responses on sensitive topics. Second, we explore the bias-va…
Community policing does not build citizen trust in police or reduce crime in the Global South
Easier said than done High-profile instances of police brutality in the last few years have brought attention to patterns of abuse that have existed since the inception of modern policing. There have been many calls for police reform, a process that in many countries has taken the form of increased police engagement with communities. Blair et al . report the results of a large-scale experiment testing the effectiveness of this approach across six…
Do Commodity Price Shocks Cause Armed Conflict? A Meta-Analysis of Natural Experiments
Scholars of the resource curse argue that reliance on primary commodities destabilizes governments: price fluctuations generate windfalls or periods of austerity that provoke or intensify civil conflict. Over 350 quantitative studies test this claim, but prominent results point in different directions, making it difficult to discern which results reliably hold across contexts. We conduct a meta-analysis of 46 natural experiments that use differen…
Field Experiments in the Global South
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
How Does Armed Conflict Shape Investment? Evidence from the Mining Sector
How does conflict affect firms' investment decisions? Past results are mixed: a third of the studies we reviewed report null or mixed correlations; some suggest that conflict increases investment. We rationalize these results, arguing that armed conflict has divergent effects depending on firms' exposure to violence. Conflict can deter investment by disrupting production or raising uncertainty. Yet, conflict can encourage investment by hampering …
Field Experiments in the Global South
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have emerged as a leading methodological tool to strengthen causal inference in the social sciences. Yet RCTs carry significant risks for ev- eryone involved, from participants to researchers themselves, especially in the Global South. In this article, we explore how researchers’ identities and power influence the conduct of research and their positionality within the research contexts—especially when conductin…
The Point of Attack
Political science (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Economics (5 works) · Mathematics (5 works) · Econometrics (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works)