Methods and Design of Our Own Empirical Study

Abstract

The empirical analyses of our study are based on IBM-SPSS-24 promax factor analyses of 24 variables according to the Arab Barometer, explicitly measure political Islam with five variables and also determine the environment (19 variables) of political Islam and its consequences, such as the lack of tolerance towards other religions, identification with states that today clearly represent political Islam, such as the regime in Iran, President Erdogan in Turkey, restrictive gender norms as defined by the UNDP Human Development Report, 2019, the belief that Muslims should enjoy greater rights in a state than non-Muslims, the negative fixation against the USA, UK and Israel in world politics, the call for a Sharia that explicitly introduces corporal punishment and restricts women’s rights, and expressing a sympathetic understanding of acts of anti-American terror in the Middle East. In this chapter, we debate the design of our study, the quantitative statistical methodology, the multivariate methods, especially based on promax factor analysis, the error margins, the problem of traceability, and the macro-quantitative cross-national data used in our comparisons. The chapter duly discusses the Arab Barometer and the files of the World Values Survey.

In this chapter, we discuss the data sources of our analysis and the statistical methods used. We mention the methods and data in the order in which they appear in this publication.

Our data sources used are the best available opinion polls on Arab countries, hence the Arab Barometer and the World Values Survey.

4.1 The Survey-Based Methodology in Comparative Social Research and the Potential of the World Values Survey

The World Values Survey (www.worldvaluessurvey.org) is, according to its website, a global network of social scientists concerned with changing values and their impact on social and political life, led by an international team of scientists. The WVS Association and the Secretariat are based in Stockholm, Sweden and the current President of the WVS Association is, incidentally, the Austrian political scientist Prof. Christian Haerpfer from the University of Vienna, who is very well known in the world’s scientific journals.

The WVS survey, which began in 1981, aims to use the most rigorous and highest-quality research designs in each country. The WVS consists—again, according to the official self-conception documented on its website—of nationally representative surveys conducted in nearly 100 countries, home to almost 90% of the world’s population, using a common questionnaire. The WVS is the largest non-commercial, cross-national time-series survey of human beliefs and values ever conducted and currently includes interviews with nearly 400,000 respondents. Moreover, the WVS is the only academic study that covers the full range of global differences from very poor to very rich countries in all major cultural zones of the world. Figure 4.1 shows the gigantic geographical spread of this project today. The research has so far taken place in seven different waves, with waves 5 and 6, conducted after 1999, being relevant for Middle East research.

Fig. 4.1

Source Our own SPSS calculations from the data of the World Values Survey, https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp

Maximum geographical coverage of the World Values Survey in wave 4 (2010–2014) and wave 5 (2017–2020) for multivariate analysis.

Of the five most cited political scientists on earth according to Google Scholar Profiles (https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&hl=en&mauthors=label:political_science), no less than two have advanced research on the topic of the World Values Survey, first and foremost the founder and long-time president of the WVS, Professor Ronald F. Inglehart (1934–2021), who passed away on 8 May 2021, and who brought it to an incredible 133,021 citations in Google Scholar. Pippa Norris, Professor of Political Science at Harvard University, also belongs to this “royal class” of international political science, and she brought it to 81,954 citations.¹

For the entire government machinery of a developed country, but also for civil society, the media and the established religious communities and their ecumenism and good coexistence, the data that can be accessed online and without further large statistical programme packages, however, offer undreamed-of possibilities. The “magic link” for this is the address of the online analysis of the World Values Survey https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSOnline.jsp.

The data of the World Values Survey—also in the last survey wave 2017 to 2020—always have something new in store for all those who go through life with a mind open to surprises, up to and including data—if anyone is interested—on the acceptance of fare evasion.

There is a rich and evolving debate in the international social sciences about the conclusions that can be drawn from these “omnibus surveys”. For some years, some leading economists have also been interested in studying global comparative opinion data, especially from the World Values Survey (Alesina & Giuliano, 2015; Alesina et al., 2015). The economic profession’s interest in the relationship between religion and economic growth was certainly a contributing factor to the rise of the methodological approach we share with many other social scientists in this study, including Harvard economist Barro (2003) and McCleary and Barro (2006). Prejudice, according to Harvard economist Alberto Alesina, who died all too soon on 23 May 2020, is the antithesis of social trust, which is crucial to long-term economic success. Racism, anti-Semitism, religious intolerance and xenophobia are therefore antithesis to societal trust. The majority of major economic studies using World Values Survey data concluded that trust is an important factor for long-term economic growth (Alesina & Giuliano, 2015; Alesina et al., 2015; Zak & Knack, 2001). Trust is also an important factor for the political stability of a nation. Some of the countries with very high rates of anti-Semitism, religious and xenophobia, such as Iraq, are also countries with extreme problems of political stability and very low levels of interpersonal trust (Tausch, 2016b; Tausch et al., 2014).

In this publication, social values are analysed within the framework of what is known in political science as the “civic culture” of the respective societies (Almond & Verba, 1963; Inglehart, 1988; Silver & Dowley, 2000; cf. also Tausch & Moaddel, 2009).

Sociologists working with the unique comparative and longitudinal opinion survey data from the World Values Survey have found, among other things, that there are fairly constant and long-term patterns of value change (Inglehart, 2006; Inglehart & Norris, 2003; Norris & Inglehart, 2012). Inglehart and his colleagues strongly believe that in the West, the ability of representatives of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, still the most numerous Christian denomination, to tell people how to live their lives is steadily declining (see also Morel, 2003).

In our publication, we use the latest edition of the World Values Survey, 2017–2020, based on 79 countries and 127,358 interviews. For political science, entering the terrain of studying political Islam in the Arab world and in Europe means many methodological problems. Since there are no Eurobarometer surveys yet on the political attitudes of the main confessional groups in Europe, and of course no Eurobarometer survey on the attitudes of Muslims in Europe, our study has to be based on the data of comparative public opinion surveys from publicly available sources. With appropriate multivariate statistical computer software, our analyses based on open-source data should be accessible worldwide at any time.

Items of particular interest for the practical work of global civil societies for the 2017–2020 wave of the World Values Survey can be found on the World Values Survey website: https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp.

4.2 The Design of the Study

First of all, we will now get to know the Arab Barometer Project. “Political Islam” is simply indispensable to contemporary Middle East studies (Akbarzadeh, 2020; Volpi, 2011). Prominent Arab researchers teaching at Princeton, New Jersey; Amman, Jordan; and Qatar University in Qatar, such as Amaney Jamal,² Darwish Al-Emadi³ and Musa Shteiwi,⁴ as lead scholars of the “Arab Barometer” project explicitly use the term “political Islam” in the questionnaire with five interview items. This measurement and thus the definition of “political Islam” is exactly our perspective, and we adopt this perspective without “ifs” and “buts” and 1:1. We strictly adhere here to the machine-readable version of the file as it can be downloaded from the Arab Barometer Consortium in SPSS format.

According to the Arab Barometer team, “political Islam” occurs whenever the following opinions are held in the region:

• It is better for religious leaders to hold public office

• Religious leaders should influence government decisions

• Religious leaders are less corrupt than civilian ones

• Religious leaders should influence elections

• Religious practice is not a private matter.

A direct screenshot from the IBM SPSS file, which is distributed worldwide by the Arab Barometer Consortium, provides absolute clarity. The five variables are described by the Arab Barometer as a direct measure of “political Islam”; other variables in the analysis are also included in our multivariate analysis (Fig. 4.2).

Fig. 4.2

“Political Islam” in our Arab Barometer IBM-SPSS Data File

In addition, the Arab Barometer, co-designed by Qatar University, also includes dimensions of “political Islam” in the areas:

• Economy

• Hatred of the West

• Patriarchy

• Rejection of liberal democracy and the rule of law

• Religious intolerance.

This openly available survey data allow researchers to directly access the original data for multivariate analysis (Arab Barometer III–V). The Arab Barometer Wave I was collected in 2007, Wave II, in 2011, Wave III, in 2013, Wave IV, in 2016 and Wave V, in 2018. For many years, participating institutions included the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, the Center for Policy Studies at the University of Michigan, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Princeton University, and SESRI, a social and economic survey research institute. Funding for the project has been received for many years from MEPI, the US Middle East Partnership Initiative, the BBC, the Qatar National Research Fund, Princeton University, the University of Michigan and the United Nations Development Programme.

The Arab Barometer seeks to measure civic attitudes, values and behaviours related to pluralism, freedom, tolerance and equal opportunity; social and interpersonal trust; social, religious and political identities; notions of governance and understandings of democracy; and civic engagement and political participation. The V wave data used here became publicly available in autumn 2019.

The empirical analyses based on IBM-SPSS-24 promax factor analyses of 24 variables according to the Arab Barometer, explicitly measure political Islam with five variables and also determine the environment (19 variables) of political Islam and its consequences, such as the lack of tolerance towards other religions, identification with states that today clearly represent political Islam, such as the regime in Iran, President Erdogan in Turkey, restrictive gender norms as defined by the UNDP Human Development Report, 2019, the belief that Muslims should enjoy greater rights in a state than non-Muslims, the negative fixation against the USA, UK and Israel in world politics, the call for a Sharia that explicitly introduces corporal punishment and restricts women’s rights, and expressing a sympathetic understanding of acts of anti-American terror in the Middle East.

Twenty-four indicators, then, according to our reading, which is based on both our own previous empirical analyses on the topic and the studies cited here by Cammett et al. (2020), Cesari (2021), Driessen (2018), Kucinskas, and Van Der Does (2017), Rahbarqazi and Mahmoudoghli (2020), Tessler (2010), and Wegner and Cavatorta (2019), measure Islamism, while five indicators, No. 13 to No. 17, explicitly measure political Islam proper, according to the Arab Barometer:

• Against the marriage of a female relative: one who does not pray.

• Against neighbours: different denominations in Islam.

• Against neighbours: other religion.

• Banks should not be allowed to charge interest.

• Economic relations: Preference: Iran.

• Economic relations: Preference: Qatar.

• Economic relations: Preference: Turkey.

• Biggest threat: Stability: USA, GREAT BRITAIN, ISR.

• Biggest threat: well-being: USA, UK, ISR.

• Islam requires the hijab.

• Men are better at political leadership.

• The rights of non-Muslims should be inferior.

• Political Islam: Consent: The country is better off with religious leaders in office.

• Political Islam: Consent: Religious leaders should influence government decisions.

• Political Islam: Religious leaders are not as corrupt as non-religious leaders.

• Political Islam: Religious leaders should interfere in elections.

• Political Islam: The practice of religion is not a private matter.

• President Erdogan (very) good.

• Sharia: Government restricts the role of women.

• Sharia: Government with corporal punishment.

• Higher education is more important for men

• Violence against the USA is a logical consequence of interference in the region.

• A woman cannot become prime minister/president.

• Women do not have the same right to divorce.

For some years now, opinion polls such as the Arab Opinion Index and the Arab Barometer Survey have played an increasing role in the region, documenting three main trends: a desire for democracy, a certain distance from actors such as Iran and Turkey, a more tolerant view of the relationship between religion and the state, and a more distanced and initially rational view of Israel's role in the region. Today, 65% of all Arabs already believe that no religious authority ever has the right to declare followers of other religions infidels. This is an optimistic and important perspective to take into account in times of cultural conflict. The Arab Barometer has long served academic journals such as The Lancet and Political Research Quarterly as an important source of public health research and social science analysis.

The empirical-analytical starting point for our analyses is, as already mentioned, the important study by Harvard professor Cammett et al. (2020), which also explicitly deals with political Islam and political values in the Arab world using data from the Arab Barometer. The empirical analyses by Cammett et al. (2020) use longitudinal data from the Arab Barometer as well as data from the World Values Survey 2015.

Although the individual studies reviewed here diverge in details, they all agree that organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas can rightly be described as “political Islam”.

The study thus empirically records political Islam strictly according to those criteria explicitly mentioned in the Arab Barometer, the most important Arab opinion research project in the world today.

4.3 The Quantitative-Statistical Methodology

Our research attempt is, of course, guided by the great traditions of mathematical-statistical analysis in opinion survey research (Abdi, 2003; Basilevsky, 2009; Braithwaite & Law, 1985; Brenner, 2016; Browne, 2001; Davidov et al., 2008; Dunlap & York, 2008; Fabrigar et al., 1999; Hanson, 2014; Hedges & Olkin, 2014; Inglehart & Norris, 2003, 2012, 2016; Inglehart & Welzel, 2003, 2009; Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Inglehart, 1988, 2006; Kim, 2010; Kimelman, 2004; Kline, 2014; Knippenberg, 2015; Manuel et al., 2006; McDonald, 2014; Minkov & Hofstede, 2011, 2013; Minkov, 2014; Mulaik, 2009; Norris & Inglehart, 2002, 2012, 2015; Suhr, 2012; Yeşilada & Noordijk, 2010).

Our methodological approach lies within a more general framework to study global values using the methodology of comparative and opinion poll-based political science (Brenner, 2016; Hanson, 2014; Knippenberg, 2015; Manuel et al., 2006; Norris & Inglehart, 2015). Our method for assessing global public opinion from global surveys is also based on recent advances in mathematical-statistical factor analysis (Basilevsky, 2009; Cattell, 2012; Hedges & Olkin, 2014; Kline, 2014; McDonald, 2014; Mulaik, 2009; Tausch et al., 2014). Such procedures make it possible to project the underlying structures of the relationships between variables.

Current social science methodology makes it clear that besides factor analysis, other powerful tools of multivariate analysis are available to test complex relationships between an independent variable and independent variables (Blalock, 1972; Tabachnik & Fidell, 2001). In our case, we used standard OLS multiple regression analysis and partial correlation analysis.

4.4 The Multivariate Methods

Our main statistical calculations relied on simple cross-tabulations, comparisons of means, bivariate and partial correlation analyses, factor analyses (promax factor analyses) and standard multiple regressions (OLS) (for a presentation of these methods in international comparative values research, see also Tausch et al., 2014).

With regard to factor analysis and the so-called skewed rotation of factors underlying the correlation matrix, we also refer to important literature on this topic (Abdi, 2003; Browne, 2001; Dunlap & York, 2008; Kim, 2010). The IBM-SPSS routine chosen in this context (IBM-SPSS 24) was the so-called promax rotation of factors (Braithwaite & Law, 1985; Browne, 2001; Fabrigar et al., 1999; Minkov, 2014; Suhr, 2012; Yeşilada & Noordijk, 2010), which in many cases is considered the best rotation of factors in the context of our current research. Put in simple everyday language, the mathematical procedures of rotating factors that best represent the underlying dimensions of a correlation matrix are necessary to make the structure simpler and more reliable.

The problem that factor analysis solves can be described as follows: Can the variables under consideration be represented in mathematically reduced dimensions, and what percentage of the total reality is thus reproduced, and how are these dimensions related to each other? And what is the relationship of the underlying variables to these dimensions? Is there indeed a “factor” or “dimension” such as religiosity and how does this affect phenomena such as “trust in the police” or “anti-Semitism”? Furthermore, is there such a thing as “feminism” and also such a thing as “class” or “status”, which influences “trust in the police” or “anti-Semitism” independently of the other “factors”? Promax factor analysis is an established multivariate and mathematical variant among the general techniques of factor analysis that extracts the underlying dimensions from the correlation matrix between variables and precisely answers the questions raised above. It has been extensively described in the literature (Finch, 2006; Tausch et al., 2014, see also Gorsuch, 1983; Harman, 1976; Rummel, 1970; further Finch, 2006; Ciftci, 2010, 2012, 2013; Ciftci & Bernick, 2013). Factor analysis—in our case promax factor analysis—also allows researchers to use the mathematical model to develop a new measurement scale for the new dimensions derived in the research process (Tausch et al., 2014). In modern social indicator research, such new scales are called “parametric indices”. The weighting of these indices is done via their eigenvalues (Tausch et al., 2014).

4.5 The Error Margins

For the calculation of the maximum range of variation in the representative opinion poll, the reader is referred to the easy-to-read introduction to the ranges of variation in opinion polls produced by the Cornell University Roper Center (2017). Readers who are more interested in the details are also referred to Langer Research Associates (n.d). Based on the methodological literature on opinion polls, this website provides a direct fluctuation range calculator for opinion polls. It is important to remember that, for example, if the distrust rate of the police in a given country is, say, 5%, the maximum margin of variation for samples of around 1,000 representative interviewees for each country would be +−1.4%. For a mistrust rate of 10%, the range is +−1.9%. For a distrust rate of 15%, the range of variation is +−2.2% see Langer Research Associates (n.d). That the ranges of variation differ according to the reported distrust of the police is an important fact of opinion survey research theory that is often forgotten to be mentioned in the public debate.

In accordance with standard traditions of empirical opinion research (Tausch et al., 2014), a minimum sample size of at least 30 respondents per country had to be available for all groups and subgroups analysed (Clauß & Ebner, 1970) (Table 4.1).

Table 4.1 Maximum ranges of variation for survey results (the probability of error is 5%)

4.6 Traceability

As mentioned above, this publication is based on the statistical analysis of open survey data and aggregated statistical country data and is based on the commonly used statistical software IBM-SPSS XXIV, which is used at many universities and research centres. The programme contains the full range of modern multivariate statistics, and researchers should be able to arrive at the same results as here if he or she uses the same open data and IBM-SPSS. Our analysis clearly offers only a first attempt and is understood as an invitation to further research, especially by generation, region and gender.

Global value studies are made possible by the availability of systematic and comparative opinion surveys over time under the auspices of leaders in the social science research community, which provide the global population with a questionnaire that has remained relatively constant for several decades.

4.6.1 Arab Barometer

As mentioned above, the sources of our opinion data, which are mentioned in order of appearance in this publication, are the Arab Barometer and the World Values Survey.

We present valid country values, the population-weighted results for the whole region and our aggregated non-parametric and parametric indicators. The population data used in our work were based on the following sources:

• 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arab_countries_by_population

• 2. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

• 3. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/state-of-palestine-population/

We also mention the future migration potential from Arab countries to Western Europe as well as data on the Islamist attitudes of these potential migrants based on the IBM-SPSS XXIV analysis of Arab barometer data.

For reasons of comprehensibility of the results, we also mention that in the IBM-SPSS files provided free of charge by the Arab Barometer, the missing values and the non-respondents unfortunately have to be eliminated “manually” in a multivariate analysis. For example, the variable Q201B_12, Trust Islamist Movement, is scaled from 1.00 “great trust” to 4.00 “no trust”. 98.00 is the “don’t know” and 99.00 is the “refused”. If I correlate this variable, for example, with the variable Q606_1: POLITICAL ISLAM: DIS/AGREEMENT: RELIGIOUS LEADERS SHOULD NOT INTERFERE IN ELECTIONS, which is coded in the same way as the variable “Trust Islamist Movement”, I must take this into account in the calculation and first eliminate the answers with the values “98” and “99” with the IBM-SPSS routine “Select cases” in order to only then obtain a valid correlation. Otherwise, the programme would calculate the values 1, 2, 3, 4 as well as 98 and 99.

The World Values Survey (see below) does not require such a cumbersome procedure for the researchers.

4.6.2 The Files of the World Values Survey

The data from the World Values Survey were taken from Haerpfer et al. (2020). This data covered the period 2017–2020 and include 79 countries and territories. For comparison purposes, we also refer to the analyses “World Values Survey_Longitudinal_1981_2014_spss_v2015_04_18.sav” and “World Values Survey_Longitudinal_1981_2016_Spss_v20180912.sav” used in previous publications by the author. Our analyses thus cover a large number of countries around the world (more than 73% of the world’s population). In the case of the World Values Survey, as with the Arab Barometer, the original data have been made freely available to the global scientific public and allow for a systematic, multivariate analysis of opinion structures based on the original anonymous interview data. There is a huge literature on the analysis of such reliable and regularly repeated global opinion surveys at the world level (cf. Davidov et al., 2008; Inglehart, 2006; Norris & Inglehart, 2015; Tausch et al., 2014).

4.7 Macro-quantitative Country Data

In the second part of our study, in which we analyse data from the World Values Survey to measure religiously motivated political extremism (RMPE), we also use World Values Survey data to calculate multivariate analyses with aggregated country data. The freely accessible “master file” of the author’s recent macro-quantitative analyses is the electronic publication:

• Tausch (2019) [Migration from the Muslim world to the West: Its most recent trends and effects. Jewish Political Studies Review, 30(1–2), 65–225, available at http://jcpa.org/article/migration-from-the-muslim-world-to-the-west-its-most-recent-trends-and-effects/ (with data definitions and sources). Free data download available from https://www.academia.edu/37568941/Migration_from_the_Muslim_World_to_the_West_Its_Most_Recent_Trends_and_Effects]

Further data for free download can be found at:

• https://uibk.academia.edu/ArnoTausch/Documentation-for-books-and-articles

there in particular:

• https://www.academia.edu/49256828/Aggregate_Data_Excel_File_for_the_Study_Political_Islam_and_Religiously_Motivated_Political_Extremism_RMPE_in_the_Arab_World_and_Austria_in_International_Comparison_Findings_from_the_Arab_Barometer_and_World_Value_Survey_Data

This file documents all 300 variables used and is in EXCEL format.