Hidden Population Estimation with Indirect Inference and Auxiliary Information

Justin Weltz, Eric Laber, Alexander Volfovsky
Proceedings of the Fortieth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, PMLR 244:3730-3746, 2024.

Abstract

Many populations defined by illegal or stigmatized behavior are difficult to sample using conventional survey methodology. Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) is a participant referral process frequently employed in this context to collect information. This sampling methodology can be modeled as a stochastic process that explores the graph of a social network, generating a partially observed subgraph between study participants. The methods currently used to impute the missing edges in this subgraph exhibit biased downstream estimation. We leverage auxiliary participant information and concepts from indirect inference to ameliorate these issues and improve estimation of the hidden population size. These advances result in smaller bias and higher precision in the estimation of the study participant arrival rate, the sample subgraph, and the population size. Lastly, we use our method to estimate the number of People Who Inject Drugs (PWID) in the Kohtla-Jarve region of Estonia.

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v244-weltz24a, title = {Hidden Population Estimation with Indirect Inference and Auxiliary Information}, author = {Weltz, Justin and Laber, Eric and Volfovsky, Alexander}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Fortieth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence}, pages = {3730--3746}, year = {2024}, editor = {Kiyavash, Negar and Mooij, Joris M.}, volume = {244}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {15--19 Jul}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlresearch/v244/main/assets/weltz24a/weltz24a.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v244/weltz24a.html}, abstract = {Many populations defined by illegal or stigmatized behavior are difficult to sample using conventional survey methodology. Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) is a participant referral process frequently employed in this context to collect information. This sampling methodology can be modeled as a stochastic process that explores the graph of a social network, generating a partially observed subgraph between study participants. The methods currently used to impute the missing edges in this subgraph exhibit biased downstream estimation. We leverage auxiliary participant information and concepts from indirect inference to ameliorate these issues and improve estimation of the hidden population size. These advances result in smaller bias and higher precision in the estimation of the study participant arrival rate, the sample subgraph, and the population size. Lastly, we use our method to estimate the number of People Who Inject Drugs (PWID) in the Kohtla-Jarve region of Estonia.} }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T Hidden Population Estimation with Indirect Inference and Auxiliary Information %A Justin Weltz %A Eric Laber %A Alexander Volfovsky %B Proceedings of the Fortieth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2024 %E Negar Kiyavash %E Joris M. Mooij %F pmlr-v244-weltz24a %I PMLR %P 3730--3746 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v244/weltz24a.html %V 244 %X Many populations defined by illegal or stigmatized behavior are difficult to sample using conventional survey methodology. Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) is a participant referral process frequently employed in this context to collect information. This sampling methodology can be modeled as a stochastic process that explores the graph of a social network, generating a partially observed subgraph between study participants. The methods currently used to impute the missing edges in this subgraph exhibit biased downstream estimation. We leverage auxiliary participant information and concepts from indirect inference to ameliorate these issues and improve estimation of the hidden population size. These advances result in smaller bias and higher precision in the estimation of the study participant arrival rate, the sample subgraph, and the population size. Lastly, we use our method to estimate the number of People Who Inject Drugs (PWID) in the Kohtla-Jarve region of Estonia.
APA
Weltz, J., Laber, E. & Volfovsky, A.. (2024). Hidden Population Estimation with Indirect Inference and Auxiliary Information. Proceedings of the Fortieth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 244:3730-3746 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v244/weltz24a.html.

Related Material