This webinar provides a conceptual framework for studying “hard-to-survey” populations.   This term has been applied to a wide range of populations, who exhibit a variety of different characteristics that make them difficult to survey. For example, there are many papers in the sampling literature on methods for sampling rare populations—low prevalence populations that must be selected from a general population sampling frame. Other populations are difficult to survey because they are widely scattered, inaccessible or highly mobile. This course explores the different dimensions that make populations hard to survey and also examines metrics that have been used to quantify the different sources of difficulty.
We distinguish populations that are hard to sample, those whose members who are hard to identify, those that are hard to find or contact, those whose members are hard to persuade to take part, and those whose members are willing to take part but nonetheless hard to interview. These distinctions reflect the main steps in many surveys, beginning with sampling and ending with data collection. The course also explores proposed metrics for measuring the difficulties in each operation during a survey and more general metrics of difficulty, such as the hard-to-count index developed by the U.S. Census Bureau. 

Webinar Homepage

Registration