Representativeness in Social and Health Surveys |
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| Coordinator 1 | Dr Olga Maslovskaya (University of Southampton) |
| Coordinator 2 | Professor Paul Smith (University of Southampton) |
| Coordinator 3 | Professor Peter Smith (University of Southampton) |
Term “representativeness” is commonly used when results of social surveys are presented and discussed. Representativeness is important when the results of the analysis are generalised from the social and health surveys to the target populations. Representativeness might mean different things in different contexts, for example, cross-sectional and longitudinal contexts, it might also mean different things in different disciplines. However, it is of crucial importance to standardise and to use the same terminology within and across disciplines. Also, it is important to explore effective methods of assessing representativeness in different contexts and to identify requirements for when researchers can claim representativeness.
In this session we would like to discuss both: a) the definitions and conceptualisation of representativeness; and b)different methods of assessing representativeness in social and health surveys and their applications.
We encourage papers from researchers with a variety of backgrounds and across different sectors and disciplines, including academia, national statistics, and research agencies. We particularly welcome contributions that use experimental designs, and/or other designs that can inform future strategies for assessing representativeness in social and health surveys.
This session is proposed by the ESRC-funded project “Understanding Coverage in UK Longitudinal Population Studies”.