Kien Trung Le

2022 Qatar World Cup Impact Perceptions among Qatar Residents

The purpose of this study was to evaluate how the impacts from the 2022 World Cup preparations in Qatar influenced local residents’ attitudes, personal and community quality of life perceptions, excitement about hosting the event, and support toward the event. The examination of the way mega sport event impacts influence residents’ perceptions of personal and community quality of life is lacking in the literature. Data were collected using systematic sampling in October 2014 from Qatari nationals and white-collar expatriates. Overall, 2,163 interviews with Qatari nationals (1,058) and white-collar expatriates (1,105) were completed. The results revealed that eight years before the event, sociocultural impacts were the most influential type of impact for residents’ attitudes toward the event, community and personal quality of life, excitement about the event, and support of the FIFA decision to host the event in Qatar.

Reform of the Kafāla System: A Survey Experiment from Qatar

Abstract Immigration in the Arabian Gulf is governed by the kafāla (sponsorship) system, which provides the legal basis for the residency and employment of foreign workers across the region. Despite mounting economic, political and social costs, the system remains entrenched with little prospect for reform. The following paper takes up this puzzle, asking the simple question, why has vital reform been so difficult to achieve? In answering this question, we explore the complex political and economic interests that underlie public support for the kafāla system. Drawing on data from a nationally representative survey experiment in Qatar, we disentangle the effects of various interests on attitudes toward immigration reform. When primed to consider blue-collar workers, citizens strongly support the status quo and oppose reform. Heterogeneous treatment effects further suggest that a powerful coalition of economic interests (uniting business owners, workers and the wealthy) is the most supportive of the current policy, underpinning its persistence and representing a major challenge to reform.

Estimating and decomposing changes in the White–Black homeownership gap from 2005 to 2011

This study evaluates the effects of the recent US housing bust on the White–Black homeownership gap by estimating and decomposing the changes in the distribution of the gap between 2005 and 2011. Our analysis shows that the housing bust did not affect the homeownership gap uniformly. In fact, we find that the gap decreased for households that were the least likely to own and remained unchanged for households that were the most likely to own, and that Black households with around a 50% probability of homeownership were especially vulnerable to the crisis. We also find that the contribution of the residual gap was modest. Changes in the White–Black homeownership gap over the sample period are mainly attributed to changes in household income, whether the household earned dividend, interest or rental income, and marital status, with the extent of their respective influences varying over the homeownership distribution. Our empirical approach reveals distributional information on the determinants of the changes in the homeownership gap at the household level. Such insights have valuable policy implications that would otherwise be concealed in analyses that look only at the conditional mean.

Citizens’ attitudes towards migrant workers in Qatar

Public attitudes play a critical role in shaping policies towards immigration and the status of migrant workers. Facing growing pressure from international human rights organizations, media and other groups, the Gulf Cooperation Council states have begun efforts to reform the current kafala system, which prevails throughout the region. Yet despite these efforts, relatively little is known about what citizens actually think of this policy, let alone their more general attitudes towards foreign workers. In the following paper, we explore this question and focus on the case of Qatar. Recently, the Qatari government promised to reform their sponsorship system in 2015. Whether this reform succeeds will depend on public attitudes towards this new policy and how citizens perceive the role of foreign workers in the country. Drawing on data from a nationally representative survey in Qatar, we use a split sample technique to better disentangle citizens’ varying attitudes towards blue-collar and white-collar workers. The survey results suggest that Qatari citizens are ambivalent about foreign workers’ contributions and overall impact on their country. While they value foreign workers’ positive contribution to the development of their country in general, they have concerns about this population’s impact on economic and health resources. Ultimately, most citizens would prefer to maintain the sponsorship system, or kafala, as it is right now.

Proxy reporting in education surveys: factors influencing accurate reporting in the 2012 Qatar Education Study

Abstract Proxy reporting is a common practice during survey data collection to increase response rates while reducing fieldwork costs, and agreement between proxies and self-reports is critical to make reliable and valid inferences. This study is the first to unpack what influences proxy accuracy in a non-Western setting using data from the 2012 Qatar Education Study. We find that agreement is a function of a student’s grade in school, grades, a parent’s level of education, and the interaction between immigration status and parent education. These findings suggest in multicultural contexts, agreement may vary based on factors beyond what is typically accounted when examining the components of reporting error as a result of using proxies over self-reports.

Parenting Young Arab Children: Psychometric Properties of an Adapted Arabic Brief Version of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire

Research has shown a connection between negative parenting practices and child conduct problems. One of the most commonly used measures to assess parenting practices is the Alabama parenting questionnaire (APQ). The current study aimed to culturally adapt and assess the psychometric properties of a short version of the APQ for use in Arabic cultures, using a sample of 251 Qatari parents of children ages 4–12. An exploratory factor analysis proposed a five-model solution that corresponds to the original proposed model in the full version of the APQ. The five constructs of the APQ correlated in the expected direction with the Conduct Problem Subscale from the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire. This study provides support for the utility of the 15-item short version of the APQ in Arabic cultures. More studies are needed to validate the performance of the short version of APQ in clinical settings.

Within-household sampling: searching for a better methodconditional on household size information

AbstractSurvey research has been used widely in various social sciences. A random selection of a survey respondent at the household level (so called within-household sampling) is critical for any valid statistical inference with the survey data. In this paper, we will review existing sampling methods. Some methods ensure the randomness, but require a lengthy and intrusive process and hence reduce cooperation. Some methods provide a quick and simple sampling at the expense of the randomness. Although household size information is collected in most of these methods, this information is not fully used. The question that these methods try to answer is how to randomly sample a person. In this paper, we argue that the method should be developed not to answer this question but to answer the question about how to randomly sample a person conditional on (or given) the household size. Compared to the current “one size fit all” methods, it is always better to use a method that allows for different ways of sampling f...