Changing Numbers, Changing Needs American Indian Demography and Public Health (1996) / Chapter Skim
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6 Problems in Sampling the Native American and Alaska Native Populations
6 Problems in Sampling the Native American and Alaska Native Populations
Pages 113-130
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From page 113... ...
Native Americans and Alaska Natives are neither as segregated nor as concentrated as blacks. While the average black in a typical American city might live on a block where 75 percent of the population is African American, such concentrations of population occur only for Native Americans living on certain reservations or for Alaska Natives living in certain rural areas.
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From page 114... ...
. This paper does not present an easy solution to the problem of how to sample the Native American and Alaska Native populations, and the correct statistical design will surely differ depending on the objectives of each study.
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From page 115... ...
, i.e., Native Americans or Alaska Natives in federally recognized tribes living in IHS service areas. This population, while national, included only 906,000 persons, just under half the nearly 2 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives counted in the 1990 census.
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From page 116... ...
The Current Population Survey design is likely to produce large numbers of Native American respondents in certain clusters; thus a substantial share of this subsample will appear in just a few locations, and the clusters will be quite different from one another. To the extent that place-to-place and group-to-group variations are important, this design reflects the inefficiencies of using a sample designed to produce precise estimates for the total population rather than for uniquely distributed subpopulations like Native Americans and Alaska Natives.
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From page 117... ...
There seem to be many people with some Native ancestry who must choose an identity, usually between white and Native American/Alaska Native, but often between black and Native American/Alaska Native. These
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From page 118... ...
showed that about 10 percent of persons identifying themselves as Hispanic on various surveys identified themselves as non-Hispanic upon being reinter-viewed. The likelihood of consistent responses was greater for those with a shorter generational gap between themselves and their immigrant ancestors: while 99 percent of persons born in a Hispanic country reported themselves to be of Spanish origin in the 1970 census, this percentage fell to 73 percent for the third generation and to 44 percent for the fourth generation.
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From page 119... ...
In 1990, the census counted over 2 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives on the basis of the race question on the short form admin
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From page 120... ...
Information on race was obtained by inspection unless the interviewer was uncertain, in which case The was supposed to ask. During this period, only 131 Native Americans or Alaska Natives were identified, about 0.4 percent of all samples.
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From page 121... ...
Moreover, we cannot assume that all persons who are included on tribal rolls or are eligible for the IHS will indicate themselves to be "American Indian" on the census, nor, as is now obvious, can we assume the opposite that all Native Americans or Alaska Natives who are eligible for the IHS can be found on tribal rolls. In conclusion, people who want to survey Native Americans and Alaska Natives need to decide on a definition.
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From page 122... ...
The problem is that the first of these groups is nearly 20 times larger than the second. If we want separate estimates of equal reliability for Native Americans and Alaska Natives, substantial oversampling of the latter population will be required, increasing total survey costs.
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From page 123... ...
Given that we have a fixed amount of money to spend on data collection, optimal allocation tells us what the sampling rate and therefore sample sizes should be in the various strata to minimize sampling error. For a survey of Native Americans and Alaska Natives, costs would be determined largely by screening rates.
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From page 124... ...
Looking at it another way, costs are reasonably consistent in areas where the proportion eligible varies from 10 to 100 percent, but they increase sharply when the proportion eligible falls below 10 percent and especially when it falls below 5 percent. Because there are clear advan TABLE 6-3 Sampling Rates Determined by Optimal Allocation for Areas of Different Population Concentrations Percent Native American or Costa per Optimal Alaska Native Interviewb Sampling Rate 100 l.lC f 50 1.2C .96f 25 1.4C .89f 10 2.0C .74f 5 3.0C .61f 4 3.5C .56f 3 4.33C .50f 2 6.0C .43f 1 ll.OC .32f 0.5 21.0C .23f 0.1 lOl.OC .lOf aBy optimal allocation, the sampling rate is proportion to the reciprocal of the square root of cost.
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From page 125... ...
For example, in Colorado there is one county, Montezuma, where at least 10 percent of the population is Native American or Alaska Native; the eligible population totals 2,141. The calculations in Table 6-4 indicate that over the total United States, about 29 percent of Native Americans and Alaska Natives live in counties where they are at least 10 percent of the population.
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From page 126... ...
even if we kept careful records, the costs of traveling to and interviewing those living away from concentrations of eligible persons would still be high; (4) Native Americans and Alaska Natives with no relatives living in the designated areas would be left out of the survey; and (5)
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From page 127... ...
List sampling simplifies many aspects of the survey as the population is readily defined to be list members; addresses are given; and, as was the case in the Strong Heart Study, we can select large enough samples from each list to permit explicit comparisons of cultural groups. The major disadvantage of the list sampling approach is that unlisted persons are omitted, and most persons identifying as Native American or Alaska Native on the 1990 census are not included on any tribal roll.
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From page 128... ...
Supple 1995 Employment, Household Structure, and the Health Insurance Coverage of American Indians, whites and blacks. Unpublished paper presented at the National Academy of Sciences workshop on the Demography of American Indians and Alaska Natives, May 22-23.
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From page 129... ...
Department of Commerce. 1993b Current Population Reports, P25: U.S.
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