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This open access book details tools and procedures for data collections of hard-to-reach, hard-to-survey populations. Inside, readers will discover first-hand insights from experts who share their successes as well as their failures in their attempts to identify and measure human vulnerabilities across the life course. Coverage first provides an introduction on studying vulnerabilities based on the Total Error Survey framework. Next, the authors present concrete examples on how to survey such populations as the elderly, migrants, widows and widowers, couples facing breast cancer, employees and job seekers, displaced workers, and teenagers during their transition to adulthood. In addition, one essay discusses the rationale for the use of life history calendars in studying social and psychological vulnerability while another records the difficulty the authors faced when trying to set-up an online social network to collect relevant data. Overall, this book demonstrates the importance to have, from the very beginning, a dialogue between specialists of survey methods and the researchers working on social dynamics across the life span. It will serve as an indispensable resource for social scientists interested in gathering and analyzing data on vulnerable individuals and populations in order to construct longitudinal data bases and properly target social policies.

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Surveying Vulnerabilities across the Life Course: Balancing Substantive and Methodological Challenges: Michel Oris, Caroline Roberts, Dominique Joye, Michèle Ernst-Stähli.- Representation of Vulnerability and the Elderly. A Total Survey Error Perspective on the VLV Survey: Michel Oris, Eduardo Guichard, Marthe Nicolet, Rainer Gabriel, Aude Tholomier, Christophe Monnot, Delphine Fagot, Dominique Joye.- Adapting Quantitative Survey Procedures: The Price to Capture Vulnerability? Lessons from a Large-scale Survey on Aging and Migration in Switzerland: Laure Kaeser.- Vulnerability following a critical life event: temporary crisis or chronic distress? A psychological controversy, methodological considerations, and empirical evidence: Pasqualina Perrig-Chiello, Sara Hutchison, Bina Knöpfli.- A Survey of Couples Facing Breast Cancer in Women: Linda Charvoz, Nicolas Favez, Sarah Cairo Notari, Bénédicte Panes-Ruedin, Jean-Fran‡ois Delaloye .- A longitudinal research on professional trajectories: Preliminary results from the 1st wave of data collection on a representative sample: Christian Maggiori, Jérôme Rossier, Franciska Krings, Claire Johnston, Koorosh Massoudi.- How to survey dis placed workers in Switzerland? Sources of bias and ways around them
: Isabel Baumann, Oliver Lipps, Daniel Oesch, Caroline Vandenplas.- Using Life History Calen dars to Survey Vulnerability: Davide Morselli, Nora Dasoki, Rainer Gabriel, Jacques-Antoine Gauthier, Julia Henke, Jean-Marie LeGoff.- Data collection through a social network: First impressions : Véronique Eicher, Mouna Bakouri, Christian Staerklé, Marlene Carvalhosa Barbosa, Alain Clémence.- Attrition in the Swiss Household Panel: are vulnerable groups more affected than others: Martina Rothenbühler, Marieke Voorpostel.

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