Adapting chain referral methods to sample new migrants

Elite or middling? International students and migrant diversification

“…The timing of our fieldwork, and our focus on London, facilitated us achieving a studentdominated, but still largely representative sample of recent Pakistani students (Platt et al, 2015). This enables us to explore heterogeneity within student migration with national origin controlled, as well as to measure the impact of this heterogeneity on early integration outcomes.…”

“…not visitors). The sample was collected using a range of techniques (Platt et al, 2015), including chain referral methods adapted from Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) (Heckathorn, 1997). Thanks to the surge of student migration during our sampling period (see figure 2 above), and the strong concentration of universities and colleges in London, we captured 576 recently arrived Pakistani immigrants on student visas (of 586 reporting education as a reason for migration).…”

Collecting data from migrants in Ghana: Lessons learned using respondent-driven sampling

“…It ultimately resulted in high-quality data that would likely have been more difficult to collect with data collectors who identified as outsiders. By incorporating these accommodations into the RDS implementation process there was no need to significantly adapt RDS to maximize the sample, as others have done (Platt, Luthra, and Frere-Smith 2015). This research achieved a large sample size (n = 625) with a relatively small team (n = 8) and budget.…”

“…A study among Pakistani and Polish migrants who recently arrived in the United Kingdom, for example, struggled with chain referral; as a result, researchers developed and implemented an alternative sampling approach in which they led the chain referral process, rather than the participants themselves (Platt, Luthra, and Frere-Smith 2015). This study also found a lack of connectedness of the target populations as well as participant reluctance to refer additional participants (Platt, Luthra, and Frere-Smith 2015). Among socially marginalized young people in Sydney, Australia, Bryant (2014) found that RDS sampled the target population inefficiently, leading to a high proportion of ineligible participants.…”

Design and implementation of a high-quality probability sample of immigrants and ethnic minorities: Lessons learnt

“…These include both more systematic and more ad hoc methods, and typically require some trade-off between cost and coverage/representativeness. With pressure on research funding and in the face of declining response rates across the board -which are typically heightened for immigrant studies (Font and Mendez 2013;Platt, Luthra, and Frere-Smith 2015), researchers often have to work with a high degree of pragmatism in their approach to sampling, even if this limits the claims they can make for the ensuing data (Beauchemin and González-Ferrer 2011;Platt, Luthra, and Frere-Smith 2015). Nevertheless, it has been argued that the best possible approach to an immigrant population survey involves probability sampling using screening of households across areas in which immigrant populations are found in different densities (excluding, by necessity, the very lowest density areas) (Erens 2013;Font and Mendez 2013;Smith 1997).…”