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Measuring Immigrant Populations: Subjective versus Objective Assessments
[journal article]
Abstract Innumeracy among survey respondents in estimating a country’s immigrant population is a well-known problem for the social sciences. In general,
individuals have been found to overestimate the immigrant population at the country level. Furthermore, individuals were found to be especially
prone towa... view more
Innumeracy among survey respondents in estimating a country’s immigrant population is a well-known problem for the social sciences. In general,
individuals have been found to overestimate the immigrant population at the country level. Furthermore, individuals were found to be especially
prone towards overestimating the number if they already were prejudiced against immigrants. If these findings generalize to lower levels of inquiry
such as neighborhoods, then research using subjective assessments of immigrant populations in these contexts might be biased as well. By
distributing a questionnaire among 142 small and mid-sized companies in the city Gothenburg, Sweden, respondent’s subjective assessments of
the immigrant population in their neighborhoods was compared to register data of those neighborhoods. Hence, although the sample was only
representative of the working population in small and middle-sized companies in a metropolitan area thus excluding unemployed, retirees, nonworking
students, and the rural population of Sweden, the results demonstrated that subjective assessments could correlate well with objective
assessments. Overall, the results indicated that the disparity between subjective and objective assessments was lower than what could be
expected from previous research findings at the country-level.... view less
Keywords
immigration; estimation; population group; Sweden; labor force; subjectivity; prejudice; measurement; objectivity; alien; social reality
Classification
Methods and Techniques of Data Collection and Data Analysis, Statistical Methods, Computer Methods
Free Keywords
overestimation; population estimates; Subjective assessment
Document language
English
Publication Year
2017
Page/Pages
7 p.
Journal
Survey Methods: Insights from the Field (2017)
ISSN
2296-4754
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed