Basics of measuring corruption

Measuring corruption: ‘The basics’By Marie LabergeUNDP Oslo Governance Centre

What challenges are involved in measuring corruption?
What challenges matter the most in the Tajik context?
Choosing appropriate assessment methods can go a long way towards mitigating these challenges.

Why measure corruption risks?
Corruption is usually performed ’in the dark’, ’in the shadows’, where it rarely can be observed directly
Therefore easier to focus on potential ’risk areas’ and collect evidence about vulnerability to corruption (’red flag indicators’)
In other words, it’s easier to measure the ’opposite’ of corruption, i.e. the effectiveness of anti-corruption mechanisms (and more useful to monitor the effectiveness of the ’remedy’ than to monitor the seriousness of the ’cancer’)

Complementarity of indicators

Exercise:
Combining input (’in law’) indicators with impact (’in practice’) indicators to assess integrity in the civil service

Two types of ‘tools’ for diagnosing and measuring corruption risks
1) Internal tools
Purpose: To identify institutional factors that enable corruption: leadership, institutional culture & incentives, internal procedures, regulations, enforcement mechanisms, transparency of operations
Sources of info: Water utility staff, experts, review of internal documents (procedural manuals, budgets, procurement documents)
Example: ’Vulnerability assessment’

Two types of ‘tools’ for diagnosing and measuring corruption risks
2. External tools
Purpose: To validate the corruption risks identified by ’experts’ (by adding a ’water user perspective’)
Sources of info: water consumers, water utility, contractors, civil society, business community
Examples: Corruption surveys, participatory corruption apparaisals

Research methods (for collecting information)
Qualitative approaches (document review, interviews, focus groups, observation) are better at describing and explaining situations
Quantitative approaches (questionnaires) are better at measuring
Used together, they provide a richer understanding of a situation

What kind of data collection methods can you think of?
What are their strengths and weaknesses?

Research methods (for collecting information)
Surveys
Interviews
Focus groups
Observation
Field tests
Analysis of documents

1. Surveys

2. Interviews

3. Focus groups

4. Observation

5. Field tests

6. Analysis of documents

Triangulation, a means to ‘verify’ information
The same topic is discussed with different groups of people
An issue is analyzed by the same group of people, but using different methods
The same group analyzes the issue at different points in time
Results from the analysis carried out by one group are shared for discussion with another group
Results of the study are shared with the community at the end to ’validate’ the findings

Basics of measuring corruption

by Governance Asssessment Portal on Jun 04, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 6

Statistics

Basics of measuring corruption — Presentation Transcript