Armenian
News Network / Groong
Conversations on Groong: The Armenian Diaspora Survey
Hello
and welcome to the Armenian News Network, Groong,
I’m Asbed Bedrossian.
This
episode was recorded on Friday, May 20, 2022.
In
this Conversations on Groong
episode, we’ll be talking about the Armenian Diaspora Survey (ADS) which has
recently been launched in the US and in Ontario, Canada, a survey that is
initiated and funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and is being
administered by the Armenian Institute in London.
To talk about
this survey, we are joined by:
|
Ayda Erbal, who is an adjunct instructor of political
science at New York University, She is the Survey Manager in the New York/New
Jersey region and leading the social media campaign for the survey. |
|
|
And |
|
|
|
Dr. Hratch Tchilingirian, a sociologist, who is the Director of the
Armenian Diaspora Survey project. He is Associate of the Faculty of Oriental
Studies at the University of Oxford in the UK. |
The
survey Armenian Survey Project - ArmenianDiasporaSurvey.com - has been around since at least 2018, and has
run successfully in a number of countries and cities like Boston, Pasadena, and
then in 2019 in Lebanon, Argentina, etc.
Can
you tell us why the Gulbenkian Foundation is sponsoring this research project to survey
the Armenian Diaspora?
How
did it go in the first phases, 2018, 2019, and so on?
Can
you talk a little bit about the methodology of the survey?
● How do you assure that for each region you have
a cohort that’s representative of the community?
● I noted that on the website you say that you
don’t ask for any personal information, and you have also posted a privacy
policy. How do you make sure the responses are authentic (not fake)?
● Why don’t you survey people under 18 years of
age?
● Do you tailor the survey for each region?
● Do you strive for a specific error margin?
● Can you tell us what kind of questions you ask
in the survey? Why?
● How many questions?
● How long do you think it’ll take on the average?
● What are the regions covered in the current
phase of the project?
● What are the timetable and deadlines of the
current phase?
● What needs to happen for you to consider this
phase a success?
I
noted that the survey team does not use the survey for policy or other uses. I
assume then that you are running the survey in as objective a manner as
possible, and then the data is made available for scholars to mine according to
their research needs?
● Can you tell us who can have access to the data?
● What format is it in, like SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics, or some
relational database?
● Have the previous results been used by
researchers to date?
○ How? With what results?
Do
you have some facts that you have gleaned from some of the communities already
surveyed?
Tell
me, what’s in it for me with these surveys? How are they going to provide
insight into Armenians around the globe, in a manner that will tangibly improve
our lot as Armenians? What’s the value proposition?
Is
there a phase after the majority of the Diaspora communities to survey Armenia
and Artsakh?
● Do you consider communities like Artsakh and
Javakhk, Turkey, to be “diaspora” communities?
We did not get to
talk about many of the topics above, and maybe we will come back in 5-6 weeks
and do an update.
That
concludes this Conversations On Groong
episode. As always we invite your
feedback, Thanks to Laura Osborn for the music on our podcasts. Don’t forget to
subscribe to our channel on YouTube, Like
our pages and follow us on Twitter. On behalf of everyone in this episode, we
wish you a good week, thanks for listening and we’ll talk to you soon.
Ayda Erbal,
Hratch Tchilingirian, Armenian Diaspora Survey, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation,
University of Oxford, New York University, United States of America, Ontario
Canada,
