October 7, 2014

Enumerating hard-to-reach populations

I’ve written before about how it’s hard to get accurate estimates of the size of small subpopulations, even with large, well-designed surveys.

Via the Herald

Mr Key said that was an emerging issue for New Zealand. “If I was to spell out to New Zealanders the exact number of people looking to leave and be foreign fighters, it would be larger, I think, than New Zealanders would expect that number to be.”

If the government really knows the ‘exact number’, there must have been a lot more domestic surveillance than we’ve been told about.

New Zealanders probably don’t have any very well formed expectations for that number, since we have basically no information to go on. My guess would be along the lines of “Not very many, but people are strange,  so probably some.” I’d be surprised if it were less than 10 or more than 1000.

 

avatar

Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »