Summary of the research
The project seeks to identify how armed actors, including the state and non-state armed actors, engage in governance activities in Colombia and Afghanistan. Armed actors not only conduct violence but often engage in governance services such as security, taxation, economic activities, or public goods provision. This research will inquire about a variety of violent and non-violent activities that armed actors conducted at the municipal level between 1990 and 2020.
Given your professional trajectory and expertise in the armed conflict and violence in Colombia and Afghanistan, you have been invited to participate in this study as part of a larger group of experts across the country. Your knowledge and insights will help to better understand the characteristics of armed governance in Colombia and Afghanistan.
This is a consent form for participation in a research project. This form contains important information about this study and what to expect if you decide to participate. Please consider the information carefully. Feel free to ask questions before making your decision whether or not to participate. Your participation in this research study is voluntary and you do not have to participate if you do not want to.
Why is this study being done?
In recent years, scholars recognized that armed actors do not only engage in violence, but sometimes develop governance structures to deliver public goods, offer dispute resolution mechanisms, collect taxes, or provide public services. However, the empirical evidence of armed governance is primarily based on a handful of cases and has not yet been analyzed in a systematic large-N evidence. By focusing on Colombia and Afghanistan, the proposed research will conduct a systematic assessment of governance structures by armed actors in the entire county over time.
What will happen if I take part in this study?
If you decide to participate, you will be asked to respond to one or more online surveys customized to your municipalities of expertise. The surveys will be delivered to you online via a secure web application. To protect your privacy, you can complete the surveys on a computer or a cellphone at the time and the place that you consider most appropriate. If you decide to participate, you will first complete a registration form that will will take about 5-10 minutes. There you will indicate your municipalities of expertise. Based on the registration form, you will receive customized surveys on armed actor governance tailored to all or some of your municipality of expertise. These surveys are expected to take between 15 and 25 minutes to complete depending on the responses that you enter.
The governance survey will ask you to check boxes indicating different types of armed actor behavior in a given municipality-year. There are no open-ended questions, and the survey will not ask about specific incidents, your personal experiences, nor details of events that could be considered sensitive.
How long will I be in the study?
The length of your participation in the study will depend on the number of municipalities you provide your expertise on. For an average participant responding to five municipality surveys, we estimate a total of 3 hours spent in the project. You do not have to devote all this time in a single day. You have the flexibility to respond to the surveys at your own pace. We would appreciate it if you could complete all your surveys within two weeks upon receiving them.
How many people will take part in this study?
We expect to recruit about 300 Colombian and Afghanastani experts to participate in this study. We recognize and value the deep and detailed knowledge that academics, social leaders, civil society activists, analysts, and security personnel have about the trajectory of the conflict and armed governance at the local level. We want to provide a space to systematically gather and aggregate all this knowledge to generate a more detailed understanding of armed governance in Colombia and Afghanistan.
Can I stop being in the study?
You do not need to participate in this study if you do not want to. If you decide to take part in the study, you may leave the study at any time. No matter what decision you make, there will be no penalty to you.
What risks or benefits can I expect from being in the study?
There may be minimal potential risks associated with participating in this study. The research protocol has taken every available measure to minimize such potential risks.
To minimize potential risks associated with non-state armed actors or government authorities, the study includes several measures to protect your privacy and confidentiality. The questionnaire does not inquire about sensitive questions nor details about events. Responses consist simply of checking boxes about different types of armed actor behavior aggregated at the municipality-year. The online system allows to respond the surveys at the time, place, and with the device (cellphone or computer) that you consider most secure. To access the surveys, you will receive personalized credentials to a secure web application hosted at the University of Arizona and protected with the highest industry encryption standards. This will protect the gathering, transmission, and storage of your data. In addition, the web application leaves no traces of your responses in the device that you use to fill the survey. After receiving your responses, we will implement a thorough process to anonymize the data using two-layers of random identification to protect your anonymity and confidentiality.
To minimize potential emotional discomfort associated with questions of armed actor violent or coercive behavior, the survey does not have specific prompts or asks about particular incidents.
Instead, the survey only gathers aggregated responses at the municipal level. In this way, due to the nature of the expertise of the local experts participating in the study, this research does not represent a greater probability and magnitude of harm and discomfort than those our local experts ordinarily encounter in their daily life.
As a token of gratitude for participating in this study, this project offers two personal benefits:
- Participants of this study will have priority access to the aggregated data collected in this study before making it available to the broader public. This will allow you to use the data to advance your own agenda before the information becomes a public good.
- As an additional benefit, participants will have the opportunity to request at the end of the study a letter certifying their participation in this research. We understand that some participants may prefer to have a document certifying their collaboration with the project, while others may prefer not to have such documentation. For this reason, this benefit will be optional for those who want to receive it.
Will I be paid for participating in the study or experience any costs?
Because of the time and internet data that you may use to participate in this research project, we will make a small compensation every time you complete a valid municipal survey. The compensation will be made as a deposit of approximately of cellphone credit to the number of your preference for each completed and valid municipal survey. The final amount may vary at the margin due to changes in the transference fee and exchange rate at the time of the transaction. We will deposit the cellphone credit a day or two after you complete each survey. The compensation does not apply to the registration form nor to incomplete or invalid surveys.
For any cellphone credit compensation you receive, we are required to obtain identifiable information such as your name and the cellphone number for the compensation. This is required for financial compliance purposes. If you are a U.S. citizen, we may need to obtain additional information from you. Identifiable information collected for financial compliance purposes will not be linked to your research data. If you do not want us to collect this information, you can still participate in this study, but you will not be able to receive any payment for your participation.
Will my study-related information be kept confidential?
Your confidentiality is of utmost importance. We will only use your personal information to create personalized account in our secure web application containing your customized surveys. The surveys will be linked using two layers of random identification number that cannot be traced back to you. Your name and any other personal information will not be associated with the data or any publication generated from this study. After creating your random identification number, we will store your personal information off-line in an encrypted file in a secure location. In that way, the random identification number will guarantee your anonymity.
The responses that you provide will be used for statistical analysis. To protect your responses, all survey data transmissions will be encrypted and will be stored in a secure server at the University of Arizona. In the extremely rare event of a data breach, the random identification number would make it extremely hard for anyone to identify the data.
The information that you provide in the study will be handled confidentially. The University of Arizona Institutional Review Board, the authority in charge of supervising the protection of human research subjects, may review the research records to ensure compliance with human research protection.
Sponsor
This project is being funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and it can be audited to verify compliance with the protection of human research subjects’ protocols.
Will my study-related information be used for future research?
If you consent to participate in this study, we may use your contact information to invite you participate in future extensions of this research or additional studies.
Who can answer my questions about the study?
If you have any questions about this study, please contact Dr. Javier Osorio at the University of Arizona: armedgov@arizona.edu; +1-520-621-4607; School of Government and Public Policy, 125 Social Sciences Building, Tucson, AZ, USA, 85721-0027.
For questions about your rights as a participant in this study or to discuss other study-related concerns or complaints with someone who is not part of the research team, you may contact the Human Subjects Protection Program Director of the University of Arizona at +1-520-626-8630 or online at http://rgw.arizona.edu/compliance/human-subjects-protection-program.