Measuring Violent Conflict in Micro-Level Surveys : Current Practices and Methodological Challenges

This paper reviews both current practices and common challenges of measuring the causes, functioning, and consequences of violent conflict at the micro-level. The authors review existing conflict- and violence-related survey questionnaires, with a particular focus on the World Bank's Living Standard Measurement Surveys. Further, they discuss methodological challenges associated with empirical work in conflict-affected areas-such as operationalizing a definition of conflict, using the appropriate units of analysis, deciding on the timing of the survey, dealing with data biases and conducting surveys in an ethically sound manner-and propose ways to improve the usefulness of existing surveys to analyze conflict processes at the micro-level. Violent conflict, households, survey methods, questionnaire design