Methodological puzzles of surveying Roma/Gypsy populations

Abstract

European countries as well as the European Union are continually striving for comparable and reliable statistics about Roma, which is a precondition to efficiently support the design and implementation of national and European Union wide inclusion strategies and sectorial policies as well as monitoring their outcomes. This article aims to provide an overview of the theoretical and practical challenges researchers need to face in the course of designing and conducting survey among ‘Roma’ populations. A number of factors – such as dilemmas about the definition of the target population, methodology of sampling of a population with multiple and threatened identity, difficulties of constructing comparable indicators – have led to greatly diverging outcomes of various ‘Roma’ surveys in terms of the most essential statistics, such as the size of the population, geographical dispersion, level of poverty, level of education and employment rate. This article will summarize the various methodological decisions that research has to make by providing illustrative examples of recent research in Hungary, Romania and the European Union. It attempts to demonstrate the actual consequences of methodological decisions in terms of the varying outcomes of a crucial indicator – employment rate – produced by six independent surveys. The article’s conclusions are further reaching: data on Roma minorities are a requirement for evidence-based, efficient policy making targeted at social inclusion of Roma in Europe, and therefore understanding methodological dilemmas in the collection of this data is essential.