08.10.2014 Germany: dispute over antiziganism study

Fleischhauer/Petrovich (2014) criticise the study on antiziganism issued by the anti-discrimination agency in Germany, as being strongly biased and politicised. They accuse the agency of having “fudged” the methodology used by scientists to obtain clearer results. The German anti-discrimination agency denies this accusation: “The scientists who carried out the study cannot agree the interpretation of the anti-discrimination agency. “The difficult job of studies is that politics likes clear results, which science often cannot deliver”, says Wolfgang Benz, one of the two project managers. […] The social sciences are not an exact science. It’s about moods and attitudes, for which there are no exact measurement instruments. Therefore, it is important to formulate the questions so that they do not suggest a particular answer. The researchers intentionally designed a catalogue in which one has to rate statements on a scale of one to seven. […] The research team had made the conscious decision to only interpret the values 6 and 7 as a dismissal. However, Luders and her colleagues have added to the 10.9 percent those who chose the scale value 5, to get a value higher and thus more media-suitable.” The dispute initiated by the Spiegel-journalists therefore concerns the qualitative weighting of the applied analytical tools. Indeed, statistics, their design and evaluation should be reviewed critically, for all studies. However, in the case of the methodology applied by the German anti-discrimination agency, one cannot identify a one-sided interpretation of the results, as the Spiegel-journalists claim. The negative values of 5-7 are all above the mean 4, representing no opinion in favour of a rejection or acceptance of a statement. The accusation that the study results were artificially inflated, therefore only applies to a limited extent. It depends on how the statement “quite accurate” is weighted with respect to the statements “accurate” and “very accurate”. The researchers state, concerning the use of the Likert scale: “The scales were made uniformly, using a Likert scale of positive values from 1 to 7, which were adjusted in a verbalised form to the respective question content. The context for the decision in favour of a finer scale division was the wish fore more graded answers instead of having a clear dichotomy into positive and negative, as for example, a 4-scale would have created” (Antidiskriminierungsstelle des Bundes 2014: 34). The authors remark that is was the particular wish of the client, therefore the anti-discrimination agency, not to create values as high as possible, but also to capture gradations: “It would be contrary to the scientific intention of the study as well as towards adequate courses of action intended by the client, to cancel the graded answers in favour of the determination of maximum values possible. Therefore, the scaling values were summarized in the presentation of the results as follows: 1 and 2, 3-5, and 6 and 7. Therefore, more nuanced opinion groups are eventuated: those who clearly agree or reject and a middle section, with opinions not as distinct (Antidiskriminierungsstelle des Bundes 2014: 37).

This finding is contrary to the assertion of Spiegel-journalists that the anti-discrimination agency requested clearer results and therefore forced them for the presentation. In terms of a critical analysis, the demand for a nuanced presentation of the results is clearly to be agreed with: the heterogeneity of reality is rarely black and white. On the other hand, one must also realise that people can often be influenced by the views of the majority in their beliefs and subordinate themselves to social constraints. This phenomenon is studied in the social sciences, under the term “new institutionalism”. This includes stereotypical views about minorities such as the Rroma. That the federal agency for anti-discrimination did not totally evaluate the results is confirmed by the finding that the majority of the respondents were aware of the genocide against the Rroma through the Nazis. This point was communicated in the study as it is.

Fleischhauer (2014) himself didn’t create his research and viewpoints in a value-free space, and therefore can be described as a political journalist himself, as can be read in his commentary on Spiegel Online. There, he comments in a condescending ductus about the anti-discrimination agency, and alleges that the director has lost touch with reality outside of discrimination questions: “Who only meets people who believe in the same thing, eventually loses touch with reality outside his own world. There, one easily panics if one faces contradiction.” This is a meaningful comment insofar, because Fleischhauer outs himself as strongly prejudiced himself, and loses somewhat credibility (compare Saarbrücker Zeitung 2014, Süddeutsche Zeitung 2014, RP Online 2014).