December 01, 2021
The Early Warning Project’s twin goals are (1) to improve discussions about mass atrocity risks and the need for preventive action, and (2) to advance the science of early warning.
Our recently released Statistical Risk Assessment—the Early Warning Project’s centerpiece product—uses methods that have been developed over decades and proven to be relatively accurate at forecasting political events. To help advance the science of early warning, we also experiment with more novel methods. One of these is our annual pairwise comparison survey.
A pairwise comparison survey is an innovative opinion aggregation method. In our case, the survey presents respondents with two countries and asks which is more likely to experience a new mass killing in the next year.
To help the Simon-Skjodt Center’s Early Warning Project forecast atrocity risk in 2022 and learn more about the “wisdom of the crowd,” please participate in our annual comparison survey. The survey will run for one month, until December 31, 2021.
How can I participate?
Go to our survey on AllOurIdeas.org. Once you vote on one pair of countries, you will be presented with another, and you can repeat this process as many times as you like—even just a few minutes of your time will improve our results.
What is a pairwise comparison survey?
A pairwise comparison survey involves a single question with many possible answers on which participants vote, one pair at a time. The response options—in this case every country with a population greater than 500,000—are randomly generated and presented to participants for their votes. The participant then chooses which country is more likely to see a new episode of mass killing in 2022 for each pair.
How does the Early Warning Project use the results?
The results are visible as the survey progresses, and will be published when it is finished (see our reports forecasting 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021). We use the results of the comparison survey to research how aggregated individual assessments compare with other risk assessment methods and how multiple methods can be used in combination. We also present the comparison survey results to policy makers in the United States and abroad, NGOs, and researchers to help them prioritize prevention efforts and further develop the crowd forecasting field.
How do you define mass killing?
The Early Warning Project’s Statistical Risk Assessment estimates the likelihood of a “mass killing” episode. We consider a mass killing episode to have occurred when the deliberate actions of armed groups, including but not limited to state security forces, rebel armies, and other militias, result in the deaths of at least 1,000 noncombatant civilians targeted as part of a specific group over a period of one year or less.
In countries where at least one episode of mass killing is already occurring—most notably Burma/Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Sudan, South Sudan, and Syria (see the full list of ongoing mass killings)—we are not asking you to assess the chances that the ongoing episode will continue or intensify. Instead, we are interested in the risk that a new episode with a different target group and/or different perpetrator will begin in 2022. For example, there are currently two ongoing mass killings in Nigeria: one perpetrated by Boko Haram against civilians perceived to support the government of Nigeria (since 2010) and the other perpetrated by state security forces against civilians suspected of supporting Boko Haram (since 2009). There would only be a new onset if the government of Nigeria began targeting another group of civilians, or if Boko Haram began targeting another group of civilians, or some other non-state armed group perpetrated a mass killing.
- A noncombatant civilian is any person who is not a current member of a formal or irregular military organization (e.g., militia, terrorist group) and who does not pose an immediate threat to the life, physical safety, or property of other people.
- The reference to deliberate actions distinguishes mass killing from deaths caused by natural disasters or infectious diseases, the accidental killing of civilians during war, or the unanticipated consequences of other government policies. Generally, fatalities are considered deliberate if they result from actions designed to compel or coerce civilian populations to change their behavior against their will, and if the perpetrators could have reasonably expected that these actions would result in widespread death among the affected populations. Examples of such actions include, but are not limited to, forced mass starvation, the intentional confiscation or destruction of healthcare supplies, forced relocation, and forced labor.
- To distinguish “mass killing” from large numbers of unrelated civilian fatalities, the victims of mass killing must appear to be perceived by the perpetrators as belonging to a discrete group. That group may be defined communally (e.g., ethnicity or religion), politically (e.g., partisan affiliation or ideology), socio-economically (e.g., class or profession), or geographically (e.g., residents of specific villages or regions). Unrelated executions by police or other state agents would not qualify as mass killing, but capital punishment directed against members of a specific unarmed political or communal group would.