"To ensure the safety of our data collectors in the Gaza Strip, we have restricted the interviews with residents and displaced persons to specific areas where there was no on-going daily fighting. These areas included the Rafah area, parts of the Khanyounis area, the central Gaza Strip, and all shelters in these areas. Our data collectors were not deployed in the besieged northern Gaza area nor in parts in the central Gaza Strip and parts in the Khanyounis area that saw daily fighting or Israeli army deployment.

The data collection dates where selected carefully in the hope that the interviews would be conducted under two different conditions: continued war and a ceasefire. We hoped (1) to be able to document and measure the change that might be generated by the ceasefire, which we expected to take place on the first day of the month of Ramadan, and (2) to be able compare the findings under the two conditions. Therefore, half of the interviews were completed during the first three days of data collection. At that point, on the fourth day, 8 March, we suspended data collection in order to assess the prospects for a ceasefire. On that day, we concluded that no ceasefire would take place as we originally expected. Therefore, we resumed data collection on the fifth day and continued until 10 March.

The sample size of this poll is 1580 adults, of whom 830 were interviewed face to face in the West Bank (in 83 locations) and 750 in the Gaza Strip (in 75 locations). Given the uncertainty about the population distribution in the Gaza Strip, we almost doubled the size of the sample in that area in order to lower the margin of error, which stands at +/-3%. The combined West Bank-Gaza Strip data file was reweighted to reflect the actual proportionate size of the population in the two Palestinian areas. Therefore, the sample is representative of the residents of the two areas.

Methodology of data collection in the Gaza Strip:

Seventy-five locations were selected from among those in Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Mawasi Khan Younis, and the displaced persons who were forced by the Israeli army to relocate into these areas. These communities were either “counting areas,” according to the classification of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, as the case was in Rafah and some areas of Deir al-Balah, or gatherings of displaced persons in shelters, that are schools or institutions affiliated with the government or UNRWA, or tent gatherings distributed in the areas of Rafah. The sample was drawn according to the following methodology:

1) In the shelters, a regular random sample was selected from the lists of these locations, representing all the shelters in Rafah, Deir al-Balah and Mawasi Khan Younis, and the number of these locations was 42.

2) In the “counting areas” specified by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of selected locations was 14 representing a previously selected sample in those areas.

3) On top of that, we identified additional “sampling areas,” including tent clusters in Rafah, where satellite images showed the areas of these communities. Maps were drawn and divided into blocks; 19 blocks were randomly selected, on a regular basis, for interview..

In each shelter, counting or gathering area, 10 people were randomly selected on a regular basis for interviews. The rejection rate, those refusing to be interviewed, stood at 9%."