Executive Director of Global InfoAnalytics, Mussa Dankwah, has refuted claims that the methodology his outfit adopted in conducting the recent poll on the 2024 presidential election is not rigorous enough.
Mr. Dankwah says research methodologies are not determined by anyone’s imagination, and “whether it is rigorous or not doesn’t lie in the opinion of somebody.”
He notes he is ready to get his methodology scrutinized by any researcher to determine whether or not it was rigorous enough or otherwise.
“Whether it is rigorous or not doesn’t lie in the opinion of somebody. But if you display and put out the methodology out there, every researcher who has done research can go through the methodology and either confirm or deny that this approach is not rigorous enough,” he told Alfred Ocansey on the KeyPoints on TV3 Saturday, April 13, 2024.
His comments come on the back of a survey conducted by his team recently, placing the opposition candidate, John Dramani Mahama, ahead of the ruling NPP’s Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
According to the survey “the ruling party’s candidate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia (DMB) trailing the main opposition candidate, John Dramani Mahama (JDM) in the race to lead the country in 2025. The poll shows JDM leads with 54.3%, DMB, 34.9%, Alan Kwadwo Kyeremanten (AKK), 7.5%, Nana Kwame Bediako, 2.3%, others, 1%.”
Reacting to the report on Accra-based JoyNews, Director of Communications for the NPP, Richard Ahiagbah indicated that “the value that we place on the outcome of this survey cannot be inclusive to the people of this country because the instrument itself can create problems due to people’s understanding of the questions asked.
“So, therefore the answers they are giving, as to whether or not they are answering the question about the country moving in the right direction (which is relative when you translate into another language) is the issue. For me, the premium we should put on this should not be too high.”
Reacting to the comments on TV3, the Executive Director of Global InfoAnalytics explained how they arrived by the sample size which has been criticised by people.
“The sample size they are talking about is not done by somebody’s imagination or somebody’s wishful thinking. It is driven by the mathematical formula. It is mathematics. If you are saying we have 18.5 million people in Ghana who could vote, and that you want to do a survey of this population and you want to have 99% confidence level of the survey you are going to embark on and you choose a margin of error of 1.6%, the result of the sample size we need to engage is 6,128. It is Mathematics, you can prove it or disprove it. Nobody can tell you that this will not give you this result,” he detailed.
