title: Methodological difficulties encountered in determining the service needs of a 'hidden population'.
abstract: This report describes some of the methodological difficulties encountered in carrying out a 4-year project designed to locate and determine the service needs of adults in Hong Kong with an intellectual disability over the age of 45 years. The project located 263 adults with an intellectual disability across a wide spectrum of Hong Kong society. The methodological difficulties encountered in attempting to locate these individuals and conducting the survey to determine the service needs of this 'hidden population' included: an interviewing process that was extremely tedious and which took much longer than originally anticipated; problems encountered in trying to convince potential subjects to be interviewed; contending with different dialects and speech comprehension; conceptions of options and choices that were often very limited because of the highly restrictive lifestyle of the individual surveyed; and discrepancies between the views of carers and adults with intellectual handicaps. Data analyses were also hampered by problems in constructing a reliable registry, computerization because of translations of names and responses, and respondent refusals as a result of concerns over stigmatization. The authors offer a discussion of these problems as learning aids for future research.
authors.affiliation: La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gow
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Balla
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004185:Disability Evaluation; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006285:Health Planning / Q000639:trends*; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand / Q000639:trends*; D006299:Health Services for the Aged / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006723:Hong Kong / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011788:Quality of Life