Methods to Infer Hard-to-Reach Populations

• Activity Number: 231
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 1, 2011 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Richard Sigman*+ and Martin Humberto Felix-Medina*+
• Companies: Westat Inc. and Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa
• Keywords: venue-based sampling ; cluster sampling ; link-tracing network sampling ; hidden population ; horvitz-thompson estimator ; inference

Abstract

The study of hard-to-reach or otherwise "hidden" populations presents many challenges to existing survey methodologies. Examples of such populations in a behavioral and social setting include injection drug users, men who have sex with men, and female sex workers. Examples in a broader economic setting include unregulated workers, migrants, homeless, displaced peoples.

These populations are characterized by the difficulty in sampling from them using standard probability methods. Typically, a sampling frame for the target population is not available, and its members are rare or stigmatized in the larger population so that it is prohibitively expensive to contact them through the available frames. Hard-to-reach populations in the US and elsewhere are under-served by current sampling methodologies mainly due to the lack of practical alternatives to address these methodological difficulti