Participatory Survey Research

This article outlines a research strategy for studying difficult-to-reach migrant populations that combines community collaboration, targeted random sampling, and parallel sampling in sending and receiving areas. The authors describe how this methodology was applied to the study of gender, migration, and HIV risks among Hispanic migrants in Durham, North Carolina. They illustrate the usefulness of community collaboration for informing survey design and providing a contextual understanding of research findings. They likewise demonstrate the importance of parallel sampling and assess the bias that would have resulted from conducting their study with convenience samples as opposed to a targeted random sampling technique. While the authors describe its application to HIV risks among Hispanic migrants, the methodology can easily be extended to other migrant groups as well as to other sensitive topics pertaining to migration and social adaptation.