This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Killworth, P. D. Articles by Johnsen, E. C. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Killworth, P. D. Articles by Johnsen, E. C. Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Estimation of Seroprevalence, Rape, and Homelessness in the United States Using a Social Network Approach

Southampton Oceanography Centre

Christopher McCarty

University of Florida

H. Russell Bernard

University of Florida

Gene Ann Shelley

Georgia State University

Eugene C. Johnsen

University of California, Santa Barbara

The authors have developed and tested scale-up methods, based on a simple social network theory, to estimate the size of hard-to-count subpopulations. The authors asked a nationally representative sample of respondents how many people they knew in a list of 32 subpopulations, including 29 subpopulations of known size and 3 of unknown size. Using these responses, the authors produced an effectively unbiased maximum likelihood estimate of the number of people each respondent knows. These estimates were then used to back-estimate the size of the three populations of unknown size. Maximum likelihood values and 95% confidence intervals are found for seroprevalence, 800,000 ±43,000; for homeless, 526,000 ±35,000; and for women raped in the last 12 months, 194,000±21,000. The estimate for seroprevalence agrees strikingly with medical estimates, the homeless estimate is well within the published estimates, and the authors' estimate lies in the middle of the published range for rape victims.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				B. Berry A Repeated Observation Approach for Estimating the Street Homeless Population Eval Rev, April 1, 2007; 31(2): 166 - 199. [Abstract] [PDF]

				P. D. Killworth, C. McCarty, E. C. Johnsen, H. R. Bernard, and G. A. Shelley Investigating the Variation of Personal Network Size Under Unknown Error Conditions Sociological Methods Research, August 1, 2006; 35(1): 84 - 112. [Abstract] [PDF]