Surveying mobile populations: lessons from recent longitudinal surveys of Indigenous Australians

Abstract

Geographically mobile populations are notoriously difficult to survey, especially in a cross-cultural context. In broad terms, it is difficult to ensure that respondents are representative of the underlying population and that data obtained are relevant to them. At a practical level, the problem can be as basic as not having any well-formed notion of what defines a household. Consequently, the resulting analysis of households is at best imprecise and, at worst, conceptually confused. Longitudinal data add a time dimension to surveys and the resulting analysis is potentially sensitive to the initial experience of individual respondents. This paper documents the lessons for the design and conduct of longitudinal data collection from three recent surveys of an exceptionally mobile population, Indigenous Australians. Since high levels of mobility characterise many unemployed and younger Australians, the lessons described here have wider application for general longitudinal surveys.