Comments

Hi Bal, Thanks for your comment again. First, I should flag for readers that I understand that there are some people who do not like the results because they do not align with their own political or personal agendas, and are trying to discredit the legitimacy of the data, which frankly has had more checks and balances in its data collection than the vast majority of datasets in the region. (I will call it data, rather than analysis because that is more what I've shared so far. We are literally reporting the basic new information.) This type of behaviour, in my humble opinion, is anti-science, post-truth, disinformation spreading, and people deserve better. I trust that you can discern these agendas from those trying to understand the situation and use evidence in good faith, which is indeed what we are trying to offer here and a central part of our mission. Caveats are offered where needed, but I am not sure that's appropriate here. I'm giving you a plot of the raw data, describing who it is, and the main new fact is the average at the top. The median, also reported, is my preference though, as it is a measure of central tendency less sensitive to outliers or potential bias in the tails. What is presented above is a super rudimentary descriptive analysis, compared to the type of empirical work economists usually do, when if you read my other research there is no shortage of caveats and checks on the research designs. A four per cent sample is large and puts this survey in very good stead compared to other data we use to think about critical issues. Take the last PNG HIES for example: 4, 191 households, out of a population of... well... I'll let you work out that share given the recent controversy, but it's much, less than four per cent. You can do a similar exercise for DHS, MICS, or any other survey, and you will see that 5 per cent is great, actually. There is a lot you can read up on the basics of sampling strategies should you be interested too, or I could happily provide some introductory texts. Of course, a sample will not be "fully representative", ever. This is an obvious fact; there is always some sampling error. (I'm happy to share what we estimate these to be from the survey design.) As a sample gets larger, this is usually reduced. More importantly here, our sample is not perfectly random. This was impossible in implementation, as we had to work hard to get contacts, lists, and so forth. At the same time, we don't have any reason to suspect any major bias, and the generous number who responded openly certainly helps with this. That our quantitative findings align with large-scale qualitative work done at the same time with often more negatively selected workers and communities is also reassuring. Indeed, one has to have some pretty creative assumptions about the nature of sample selection to get to a substantially different interpretation of the data. One potentially important type of selection is absconders, for example. We have them in the sample. But, naturally, some are not. To the extent that their response values are wildly different from the others (say, they've left because they got no hours) and you would want to include more of them as current scheme workers, then including more of them in your sample would add more "low" values and pull the average down. For it to move it enough to substantially alter the main descriptive findings, say to shift the medians, you might need to make some heroic assumptions though and this would be a different worker sample. Our frame was to try and get a sufficient (to do statistical analysis) number of from each country-scheme pair. I hope that the above information helpful for you to understand it a bit better, and I'm happy to discuss further. We need more surveys like this, as it is important to triangulate what evidence we can get and not just have one single reference. In the meantime, I hope that our new data is a helpful resource for researchers and policy analysts. This is the first survey to cover all three schemes and will be the first longitudinal data for the region once we do the second wave. It's an important contribution to the Pacific data ecosystem, which we hope others are also eager to get the most out of. We'll be posting all the de-identified data and the documentation shortly for anyone to check, and use themselves, when we launch a major report using it shortly. I hope it leads to lots of productive downstream analysis and discussion like this. I wholeheartedly encourage any and all exercises and indeed criticisms comparing or leveraging other datasets to look into these concerns and better understand representativeness and any other reporting issues, as all data have strengths and weaknesses and it's only from an intimate use of them that we really pick all these up over time. Warmest wishes again, Ryan

Ryan, if the methods are as described in the article, then take that it is understandable as read to support the legitimacy of the analysis. However, it does not negate the fundamental issue in that it is a roughly 4% sample. The issue or question raised is a critical one — workers, people and governments in the Pacific are concerned with it. For such an important issue, would you agree it would be responsible research for the paper to admit to some limitation in its analysis and provide some caveat eg surveyed sample may not be fully representative even if one is confident in their data?

I was totally unaware of Colin’s passing until I read this post. I worked extensively with Colin on the AQEP project in Fiji and we had many moments to reflect on our shared Canadian - Australian background. Wonderful man with so much to give.

A fantastic tribute. A great man who made a lasting impact everywhere he worked. Such a huge loss to the education sector in the Pacific.

Thank you for this excellent tribute to Colin. Colin’s legacy is clear. The effectiveness of the EMIS’ he helped to establish and develop demonstrates that the way that we work, with humility, warmth, collegiality, listening, humour and honesty, is equally as important as technical know-how. Vale Colin. You are missed.

Many thanks to the authors for highlighting Colin's amazing contributions to the Pacific. Colin was a beacon of humour, integrity, commonsense and technical excellence. Most of all, I admired his resilience and passion. Colin, we miss you, but your legacies continue to positively impact the lives of many.

EDUCATED!? You call that education? the school system is indoctrinating students and making them believe that if they don't pass a useless standardized test they have no value. FOR 8 HOURS they tell them what to think and force-feed them these lies. They condition them rather than teach them, heck they tell them to raise a hand if they wanna even speak. They take away creativity, individuality, and critical thinking no matter what they try and tell you and you call that EDUCATION!? I know what I'm talking about because I'm a student myself and I see it all the time. A chosen few of us have the guts to fight against the system and I happen to be one of them.

The person is right. school is a complete waste of time.

Bal. A census covers everyone and a sample covers some share of that population, with a few to shine some light on the characteristics of the population. A census on this matter does not exist and we conducted a survey. Indeed, a census on them would be a waste of valuable time and money and add little value beyond our extensive survey. All potential steps were taken to make the sample as representative as possible, and this naturally becomes more the case as that gets bigger. Bespoke microeconomic surveys often might cover just a few hundred, not thousands, which is more the realm of official surveys like the HIES. However, here, we are closer to those than a small survey. Calling academics whose conclusions (here, facts, hard data) you don't agree with "irresponsible" because you don't understand the methods is incredibly poor practice, and usually an indication to not be taken seriously. Best, Ryan

Interesting to see the conclusion here that workers get more than 30 hours, a conclusion based on the survey of a limited pool. As the paper admits, “These numbers are based on the 1,407 PALM workers who were asked in the Pacific Labour Mobility Survey”. Of the roughly 35000 PALM workers, that’s approx 4%. To make a conclusion as such based on that portion of surveyed workers is somewhat irresponsible as to the question of “how many minimum hours the workers get”.

Totally agree Stephen. The overtones are cringe worthy - actually worse. Some of the appalling behaviour in lead up to the recent referendum and result has only served to highlight the Australian psyche when it comes to Pacific peoples. "Not over here thank you." The first thing our representatives should do is drop the "Pacific Family" and "our back yard" monikers. Both are cringeworthy, paternalistic and in light of recent events seen for what they really are by Pacific people. One step forwards, two backwards.

Dear Robin, thank you for sharing your views on this topic – really insightful! I think it would be interesting to take a closer look at the examples you mentioned. Best Stephen