Appendix: Chapter 2 UCI Survey Methodology

This appendix describes the survey design and implementation of the Unbundling Corruption Index (UCI) in more detail. The first step of the survey was to create a pool of potential respondents. After searching the literature and online resumes, and seeking recommendations by colleagues, I identified a group of individuals who have extensive experience in or broad knowledge of a country’s political, economic, and social context. The survey is hosted on Qualtrics, a third-party online survey platform. Each member of the expert pool was sent a private link to participate. I informed the invitees that the survey is anonymous, meaning that no personally identifiable information was collected or stored through the platform or via the questionnaire.

Of the 372 invitations sent out, 135 surveys were started and 125 completed, yielding a response rate of 36% and a completion rate of 84%, which is within the normal range of surveys. The respondents are primarily academics with area expertise in a particular country (73), journalists (11), and business leaders or professionals with at least 10 years of experience (11). Others included development consultants and mid-to-senior-level civil servants. Among the respondents, 45% are natives of the countries that they evaluated.

In the final dataset (Table A2.1), only countries with at least four expert responses were included. The number of responses ranged from four to 20, as follows: Bangladesh (4), Brazil (6), China (20), Ghana (5), India (6), Indonesia (5), Japan (9), Nigeria (5), Russia (12), Singapore (7), South Africa (5), South Korea (9), Taiwan (5), Thailand (4), and the United States (20).

As discussed in Chapter 2, the UCI leverages stylized vignettes to capture perceptions of distinct categories of corruption. Altogether, our survey included 20 vignette-style questions, grouped into four categories: access money, speed money, grand theft, and petty theft. For each vignette, respondents rate the prevalence of each type of corruption on a five-level Likert-type scale, ranging from “extremely common” to “never occurs.”

The greatest challenge of implementing this survey is getting experts to respond and having at least four respondents for each country. Understandably, experts and professionals are busy individuals, so it’s not easy for them to find time to take an extended survey. One reader complained about the absence of European countries in my sample. The reason for this is that, despite repeated requests, I could not get enough experts from Europe to respond. Hence, I thank all the respondents who took time from their busy schedule to take the survey, and I hope that, in future iterations of the UCI, more experts from all over the world may be willing to share their time and expertise.