Evironics site on Afghan Poll

THis is from the Environics Website. THe site has lots of useful information on how the poll was conducted plus an easy to read summary of the results just as good if not better than the CBC site.
One wonders how it was decided who to poll. There must surely be districts where it is difficult to poll. The polling company has actually had a pollster shot and killed. I would venture to guess that the area is now not polled at all! It would seem natural to pick people that one knows would probably co-operate and that may give you representation in terms of gender, age, location, etc. but could provide unrepresentative answers. Anyway I am surprised that there is not even any curiousity about these issues in the media. The polling responses as mentioned at 85 per cent if far above what you would get in the west. Why?


Methodology
The research was designed by Environics, in consultation with its media and academic partners.
The survey was conducted for Environics by D3 Systems Inc. and its subsidiary, the Afghan Centre for Social and Opinion Research (ACSOR-Surveys), based in Kabul. D3 Systems/ACSOR established the capability to conduct country-wide public opinion surveys across Afghanistan following the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, and includes among its clients the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), ABC News, the Asia Foundation, and the United Nations Industrial Development

The Environics survey was conducted by ACSOR between September 17 and 24, 2007 with a representative sample of 1,578 adult Afghans (18 years and older) across all 34 of the country's provinces. The surveys were conducted in-person in people's homes in either Dari or Pashto, the two dominant languages. Female interviewers interviewed women and male interviewers interviewed Afghan men, and the sample was stratified to ensure a 50-50 distribution on gender.

The survey sample consisted of 1,278 interviews conducted across the country, plus an additional 300 interviews to provide over-samples of 270 interviews in Kabul (the country's capital) and 260 in the province of Kandahar, where the Canadian mission is based. The margins of sampling error for these samples are plus or minus 3.8%, 7.3% and 7.3%, respectively (at the 95% confidence level). The response rate for this survey was 85 percent, a rate almost unheard of today for research conducted in the western world. Further details on the methodology used to conduct this survey are available from Environics