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When surveying the general population the preferences, aspirations, or needs of the public as a whole should be revealed and every individual’s position should have the chance to be represented equally. Underlying this aim lies the notion of an observed sample as a representative, unbiased, and sufficiently precise reflection of an underlying (unobserved) population of interest of a study. Besides decreasing response rates, population-based surveys are facing additional challenges. One of them deals with the important aspect of how to access hard-to-reach populations. Frequently hard-to-reach populations are for instance, immigrants, refugees or ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, the elderly, the disabled, homeless people, children or households living in poverty, nomads, etc. The literature shows that hard-to-reach populations are not accurately represented in general population surveys. There are, systematically, higher non-response rates in cross-sectional surveys due to fewer contacts and more refusals as well as higher attrition rates in longitudinal surveys. The underlying mechanisms for the underrepresentation of those populations are more nuanced; they might be related to the fact that those populations are hard-to-sample, hard-to-identify, hard-to-find or to-contact, hard-to-persuade to participate and/or hard-to-interview (Tourangeau 2014). However, the consequence of the underrepresentation is that the survey is biased and that it may be difficult to estimate reliable and unbiased parameters for those populations. Besides general population surveys, the demand for surveys addressing special groups of the population (such as sexual minorities, refugees, sex workers, physically handicapped people etc.) has increased. However, those surveys come with particular requirements when it comes to sampling- and survey-design.
In this session, we would like to discuss the current situation of hard-to-reach population research in various national and international contexts as well as practical requirements and problems. This session invites contributions showcasing research around the challenges, successes, innovations and best practices when collecting, editing, and publishing data on hard-to-reach / vulnerable populations in surveys. We suggest but do not limit the session to the following aspects:
• Data quality
• Sample frame and coverage issues
• Sampling procedures, problems of accessibility
• Locating, contacting, and recruiting hard-to reach populations
• Unit- and item-nonresponse
• Interview modes
• New technologies and techniques in data collection
• Question properties and response sets
• Interviewer-Respondent interaction and interviewer effect
• Role of memory in rendering certain groups less visible to research