Sub-population Research

According to U.S. Census Bureau projections, minority populations will comprise more that fifty percent of the United States population by the year 2010. It is therefore very important to have accurate counts of the minority populations by ethnic group for policy and business decision purposes. The areas for research into the sub-populations area include:

• Research into the content, wording, and design of questionnaires to facilitate responses, completeness of questions, and data processing;
• Research on enumeration methodologies (including self-administered, computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI), computer-assisted personal interviews (CATI), and interviewer-completed forms) to assess the impact on the respondent’s understanding and ability to accurately answer the questions;
• Research into the use of administrative records as a supplement to census and survey coverage for traditionally undercounted population subgroups;
• Research special methods of enumerating traditionally hard-to-enumerate sub-population groups;
• Ethnographic research into barriers to enumeration, especially those hard-to-enumerate populations such as migratory and seasonal laborers, communities of language other than English, and institutional and group populations; and,
• Research into non-English language data collection instruments including the development of content, wording, and design of these instruments and their supporting documents.

Sabre has been involved in two of these areas of sub-population research. They are:

• Qualitative and cognitive research on the Hispanic questions to be asked in the 2010 census; and
• Investigation of the size, characteristics, and impact of migration (from abroad) to the United States. This is a large-scale project with many facets.
  • Qualitative and cognitive research on the Hispanic questions to be asked in the 2010 census; and
  • We are studying the ability of the American Community Survey (ACS), which has a large sample size and is taking place of the long form on future decennial censuses, to accurately measure the foreign-born population by a number of demographic, social, and economic characteristics.
  • Sabre is measuring the degree to which the foreign-born populations congregate in neighborhoods of persons with the same country of origin and how long the foreign-born live in such enclaves before dispersing and become assimilated into the overall populations of various communities.
  • We are studying the patterns of migration of voluntary and involuntary migrants and those “non-migrants” and Sabre researchers are developing algorithms and mathematical models that can be used to estimate these persons using data from future surveys.
  • Our research is also moving into the how foreign-born persons identify themselves in terms of country of origin, nationality, and ancestry.

As the results of these analyses are completed, they will be published in a separate Immigration Studies subsection of the Whitepapers section of this website. The results of other research projects will appear in the other appropriate areas of the Whitepapers section.

For More Information...

Contact Sabre at 1.877.SABRESYS (1.877.722.7379) or by