Including Hard-to-Access Populations Using Mobile Phone Surveys and Participatory Indicators

Abstract

One of the main obstacles for survey researchers—especially those conducting surveys in difficult contexts such as postconflict areas—is accessing respondents. In order to address this problem, this article draws on an ongoing research project to reflect on the utility of mobile phones to connect with hard-to-access populations in conflict affected, low-income countries. It considers the strengths and weaknesses of a number of different mobile phone survey modes. The article goes a step further and discusses how (potential) survey respondents can be included in the survey design process thereby increasing the relevance of the research to them and hopefully encouraging them to participate. We conclude by considering the issue of “good enough” methodologies, or the need to balance methodological rigor with an understanding of the exigencies of suboptimal research contexts.

Hard-to-Survey Populations and Respondent-Driven Sampling: Expanding the Political Science Toolbox

“…RDS is a method for sampling and analysis that leverages trust between members of hidden populations to produce representative samples, conclusions about which can then be inferred to the population because of weighting based on respondents' degree-based inclusion probability. Parting ways with the purities of probability sampling but advancing statistically on nonprobability approaches, RDS may be a "good enough method" for surveying: a method that allows both for flexibility and rigorousness in difficult contexts (Firchow and Mac Ginty 2017). It can be better if deployed within an integrative multimethod research design.…”

“…They may be hard to sample because they are not documented on population lists that could constitute sampling frames; hard to identify because the visibility of their status could pose risks to their well-being; and hard to reach because, as a mobile population, they lack permanent or formal contact information. In conflictafflicted settings, entire populations may be hard to survey because of generalized challenges of access and vulnerability (Cohen and Arieli 2011;Firchow and Mac Ginty 2017).…”

Informed Consent for Mobile Phone Health Surveys in Colombia: A Qualitative Study

“…Moore et al, 2017). Firchow and MacGinty (2017) have acknowledged that surveys conducted through text messages might leave respondents even more exposed due to the fact that their responses remain in their mobile phones. Therefore, Ali et al (2019) suggest prior, explicit agreement between relevant primary, intermediate and secondary parties regarding who can access data and for what purpose.…”

Circuits, the everyday and international relations: Connecting the home to the international and transnational

“…Participatory techniques are not without their pitfalls, such as a tendency to overlook – and sometimes reinforce – power structures and exclusions (Cottrell and Parpart, 2006; Parpart, 2000: 7–8). The project team did its best to try to ameliorate these problems, although the extent to which research that is funded and directed from the global north can ever be truly ‘participatory’ is questionable (Firchow and Mac Ginty, 2017: 22). While the researcher aims to have a light footprint, especially when examining something as delicate as the everyday, there must be an acknowledgement that all research on human subjects has an impact.…”