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Questionnaire Design and Sampling (special) Populations
Language: English
During 2015 nearly one million people arrived in Europe mainly through the sea borders of Greece and Italy in quest of a safer life. The unprecedented flows of refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants among them a considerable number of unaccompanied minors marked the onset of a humanitarian crisis that reaches far beyond the European continent. These processes of global migration and integration pose new challenges for migration and refugee research.
One of these challenges relates to the sampling processes. Thereare ambiguities in terms of who should be defined as a refugee and it is difficult to locate individuals on the move or living in different accommodation settings. Diverse identification and registration policies as well as relocation and accommodation policies make international comparisons more complex. International comparisons are also difficult because of the diversity of the individuals themselves: Refugees come from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, have different traumatic experiences related to pre and post-displacement factors and different needs in terms of housing, education, and health care.
In this regard research on survey designs for refugee populations has to take into account cross-cultural equivalence in questionnaire design, sampling strategies for hard-to-survey populations, collection modes employing new tools like social media, and sensitivity of related research especially as it pertains to unaccompanied minors.
We welcome contributions that address sampling issues, in particular methodological and ethical challenges in refugee research to provide new insights in the field.