ORB survey of Iraq War casualties

Participants of the ORB survey were asked the following question:

How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof.

The revised results[5] were

ORB reported that "48% died from a gunshot wound, 20% from the impact of a car bomb, 9% from aerial bombardment, 6% as a result of an accident and 6% from another blast/ordnance."[1]

From the September 14, 2007 ORB press release[1] concerning the first set of interviews:

• Results are based on face-to-face interviews amongst a nationally representative sample of 1,720 adults aged 18+ throughout Iraq (1,499 agreed to answer the question on household deaths)
• The standard margin of error on the sample who answered (1,499) is +2.5%
• The methodology uses multi-stage random probability sampling and covers fifteen of the eighteen governorates within Iraq. For security reasons Karbala and Al Anbar were not included. Irbil was excluded as the authorities refused the field team a permit.

Their pollster was Dr. Munqeth Daghir, founding director of the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies (IIACS).[1][8] ORB described IIACSS as a “polling/ research company established in Iraq in 2003 and which has a network of interviewers covering all regions of the country."[5]

ORB is a member of the British Polling Council.[5]

The 2005 census reported 4,050,597 households. From this ORB calculated 1,220,580 deaths since the 2003 invasion. From the poll margin of error of 2.5% ORB came up with a range of 733,158 to 1,446,063 deaths.[1]

Opinion Research Business published an update to the survey on 28 January 2008, based on additional work carried out in rural areas of Iraq. Some 600 additional interviews were undertaken and as a result of this the death estimate was revised to 1,033,000 with a given range of 946,000 to 1,120,000.[4]

The ORB poll estimate has come under criticism in a peer reviewed paper entitled "Conflict Deaths in Iraq: A Methodological Critique of the ORB Survey Estimate", published in the journal Survey Research Methods. This paper "describes in detail how the ORB poll is riddled with critical inconsistencies and methodological shortcomings", and concludes that the ORB poll is "too flawed, exaggerated and ill-founded to contribute to discussion of the human costs of the Iraq war".[9][10]

Epidemiologist Francisco Checci echoed these conclusions in a 2010 BBC World Service interview, stating that he thinks the ORB estimate was "too high" and "implausible". Checci, like the paper above, says that a "major weakness" of the poll was a failure to adequately distinguish between households and extended family.[11]

The Iraq Body Count project also rejected what they called the "hugely exaggerated death toll figures" of ORB, citing the Survey Research Methods paper, which Josh Dougherty of IBC co-wrote.[9] IBC concluded that, "The pressing need is for more truth rooted in real experience, not the manipulation of numbers disconnected from reality."[12]

John Rentoul, a columnist for The Independent newspaper, has asserted that the ORB estimate "exaggerate[s] the toll by a factor of as much as 10" and that "the ORB estimate has rarely been treated as credible by responsible media organisations, but it is still widely repeated by cranks and the ignorant."[13]

• Casualties of the Iraq War. An overview of many casualty estimates.
• Iraq War. Infobox there has the most up-to-date casualty figures.
• Lancet surveys of Iraq War casualties
• Iraq Family Health Survey