A report published by the Jordanian Media Credibility Monitor (AKEED) under the headline "Press Coverage of UNICEF Report Reveals Weak Handling of Figures and Percentages" helped draw the attention of the government and experts to the extent of fallacies contained in a UNICEF report, prompting them to contact UNICEF. The UN organization extended an official apology to Jordan last Wednesday.
The AKEED report, published on 20 September 2014, highlighted the fallacies contained in a story published by numerous media outlets on the UNICEF report, which carried the title "Hidden in Plain Sight." AKEED did this by conducting an in-depth examination of the figures contained in the study. It discovered that the figures were completely detached from reality. The AKEED report was published in many local media outlets.
On 6 September, a number of daily newspapers and electronic press sites published a story saying that "80% of girls between 15 and 19 in Jordan believe that a husband is justified in beating his wife under certain circumstances," based on the report "Hidden in Plain Sight." Following an investigation conducted by AKEED, it turned out that the way in which the figures were presented and the percentages were added based on a set of questions was incorrect and contributed to misleading public opinion.
AKEED learned that the UNICEF report based its figures in relation to Jordan on a study conducted by the Department of Statistics titled "Family Health" in 2012. The newspapers Al Arab Al Yawm, Al Ghad, and Al Dustour, and many electronic sites only published the press release of UNICEF, which briefly noted that half of teenage girls in the world, between 15 and 19 (around 126 million girls), believe that a husband is justified in beating his wife under certain circumstances. This percentage goes up to 80% or more in Afghanistan, Guinea, Jordan, Mali, and East Timor.
At the time, the AKEED team called Ikhlas Aranki, assistant director general of the Department of Statistics and director of the Population and Family Health Survey, to check the accuracy of these figures. She pointed out that the study included a set of questions to measure the extent of justification by wives of their husbands beating them. The study included 11,352 Jordanian women aged 15-49.
The story published in the newspapers did not explain the standards of the questions and was applied to all girls between 15 and 49 without mentioning the questions addressed to them. Also, the news did not show that the questions targeted ever-married girls.
According to Aranki, girls between 15 and 19 are 278 and make up around 2.5% of the size of the sample, which totals 11,352 women. The questions were asked to them under the heading "you justify your husband beating you under the below circumstances":
- If you burn the food? 3% of the girls answered yes I justify.
- If you argue with him? 12% answered yes I justify.
- If you go out without telling him? 24% answered yes I justify.
- If you neglect the children? 25% answered yes I justify.
- If you insult him? 53% answered yes I justify.
- If you do not feed him? 44% answered yes I justify.
- If you have relations with another man? 77% answered yes I justify.
Aranki said that considering the general percentage of women who agreed to men beating them, based on the previous questions, "we find that 84% of girls justify men beating them if they answer yes to any of the previous questions, and this does not reflect reality." She said that numbers should be interpreted based on the set of questions that are asked to women, and not based on the total answers of yes or no.
According to a story carried by the Jordan News Agency (Petra) last Wednesday, the government received an official letter of apology from the headquarters of the United Nations Children"s Fund (UNICEF) in New York on the wrong figures it included in its report on violence against children in Jordan. Reem Abu Hassan, minister of social development, told the Jordan News Agency (Petra) that the Cabinet took note last Wednesday of the content of the UNICEF letter, which included its apology for the inaccurate indicators included in its report on violence against children. The report gave Jordan a high ranking among the countries of the Middle East and North Africa in homicide of children and violence against women and children.
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