A Protocol for Identifying and Sampling From Proxy Populations.

Objectives: Increasingly it is more and more difficult for researchers to garner a robust response rate from their target population. In response, they often turn to more accessible proxy populations. However, guidance on how to identify and select a proxy population that reasonably mimics the targe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social Science Quarterly (Wiley-Blackwell) Vol. 99; no. 4; pp. 1535 - 1547
Main Authors: Lu, Tao, Franklin, Aimee L.
Format: Article
Published: Wiley-Blackwell Dec2018
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Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Description
Summary:Objectives: Increasingly it is more and more difficult for researchers to garner a robust response rate from their target population. In response, they often turn to more accessible proxy populations. However, guidance on how to identify and select a proxy population that reasonably mimics the target population is neither expansive nor systematic. Our objective is to fill this gap by offering a standardized protocol for selecting appropriate population. We introduce a proxy selection protocol that combines convenience with purposive nonprobability sampling. Methods: The protocol introduces a method following a step‐by‐step process to evaluate the suitability of a different potential proxy populations as a reasonable representation of the target population. Results and Conclusion: We come to an conclusion that this proxy selection protocol can overcome low response rates and avoid contamination of a limited target population when conducting exploratory or early‐stage explanatory research of potential causal relationships.