EUMIDIS II Main methodology Q&A

EU-MIDIS II collected information from 25,515 respondents with different ethnic minority and immigrant backgrounds across all 28 EU Member States. The sample includes people belonging to ethnic or national minorities, Roma and Russians, as well as people born outside the EU (first-generation respondents), and individuals with at least one parent born outside the EU (second-generation respondents).

Immigrants and descendants of immigrants came from Turkey, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia (in Cyprus, Asia); in Slovenia and Poland, individuals who immigrated from any non-EU country in the past 10 years were included.

The survey includes questions on perceived discrimination in different settings, such as  employment, education, housing, health and when using public or private services. It also covered police stops, criminal victimisation (including hate crime) as well as awareness of rights and where to go for help. In addition there were questions on societal participation and integration, including trust in public institutions and level of attachment to the country of residence. Respondents also provided information about basic socio-demographic characteristics for all household members, including themselves.

Interviews across all 28 EU Member States took place from October 2015 to July 2016.

In total 25,515 people were interviewed. The sample size per target group in each country ranged from 369 immigrants and descendants of immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa in Italy to 1,408 Roma in Romania.

The EU-MIDIS II sample is representative for the targeted population groups that were surveyed except in Luxembourg as it not possible to carry out a random sample. All respondents were 16 or older living in private households, and had lived in the country for at least 12 months before the survey.

The countries of origin for each target group were selected based on considerations with respect to their vulnerability of being discriminated against. The detailed list of countries of origin are listed in the separately published EU-MIDIS II Technical Report. The countries included in EU-MIDIS II per target group cover most immigrants from these respective groups. The six countries covered in EU-MIDIS II with respect to Turkish immigrants host 82% of all immigrants from Turkey in the EU, with most settled in Germany. The countries selected for Sub-Saharan African immigrants host roughly 86% of immigrants from this region. The selected EU-MIDIS II countries host about 92% of North African immigrants and about 69% of South Asian immigrants in the EU.

The Agency designed the survey content and methodology with input from statistical experts and experts in minority and migration research, civil society representatives and after a cognitive pre-test of the questionnaire in six Member States in 2014. An international UK-based survey company, Ipsos MORI, collected the EU-MIDIS II data in all Member States under the supervision of FRA staff, who monitored compliance with strict quality control procedures.

The English source questionnaire, developed by FRA, was translated into 22 EU languages as well as into Arabic, Kurdish, Russian, Somali, Tamazight and Turkish, which were used to interview respondents.

Together with the Agency, Ipsos MORI designed an interviewer training programme that was used to train national data collection teams in 2015. FRA participated in a number of training sessions to monitor the quality of the training and its content, to help ensure that the data collection methods were used consistently across all survey countries.

FRA analysed the data in the current report.

The main interview mode was Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) – that is, face-to-face interviews by interviewers using a computerised questionnaire, and paper showcards to aid understanding and response rates.

Interviewers were specially trained for the survey, including cultural and ethical training. Wherever possible or necessary, interviewers with the same ethnic background and/or gender conducted the interviews to increase responsiveness among the target groups.

FRA made field visits in several countries to monitor the quality throughout.

The length of interviews with each respondent depended on their personal experiences and averaged about 45 minutes.

The survey was carried out by professional interviewers, trained to ensure confidentiality.

The survey data set is anonymised and does not contain any personal information that would enable respondents to be identified. Care was taken during the data analysis so that nobody can be recognised from the results.

Individuals aged 16 years or older who live in private households, and whose usual place of residence was one of the EU Member States for at least 12 months.

Which target group to survey in each country was based on a range of criteria. These includedc the size of the target population, the feasibility of carrying out a survey with the respective target population, the group’s risk of experiencing ‘racially’, ‘ethnically’ or ‘religiously’ motivated discrimination and victimisation, their risk of social exclusion and comparability with previous FRA surveys.

Respondents were asked about their country of birth or – in the case of descendants of immigrants – their parents’ country of birth. Respondents included both citizens and non-citizens of the survey country, for example immigrants who have obtained citizenship, descendants of immigrants who have citizenship since birth, as well as immigrants who still hold the citizenship of their country of origin. Ethnic minorities, including Roma and the Russian minority, were included based on their own self-identification.

When interviewing immigrants and their descendants, up to two people could be interviewed in each household who were randomly selected from all eligible respondents in a household.

Ethnic or immigrant minorities are considered as ‘hard-to-reach’ groups in surveys. They are relatively small in number compared to the total population, spread across the country and there tend to be no sampling frame as reference for selection of respondents from the target groups (i.e. list of people that can be used to make a controlled representative selection of the target group). This means that achieving a representative sample is more difficult compared with general population surveys.

EU-MIDIS II mainly used a multistage random probability sampling design.

Whenever possible, a sample was drawn from a sampling frame covering the target population. However, the opportunities to sample the target population are hugely different across Member States due to different availability of sampling frames and distribution of the target group in the countries.

Advanced and new sampling methodologies had to be developed and used in most countries, and the best possible design was chosen for each target group in each country. For some target groups in some countries, a combination of different methods was used to ensure better coverage of the target population. A detailed description of sampling methods used in the survey is available in the technical report.

In some countries, national coverage had to be reduced for reasons of efficiency. This means that in multi-stage sampling, areas with lower densities of the target populations of were excluded because screening of the target populations would not have been possible. The thresholds vary from areas with fewer than 2.7% in Cyprus to the 30% in Estonia. These cut-off points, which were unavoidable due to the need for screening respondents in most countries, limited the overall coverage of the target population in the countries. The median coverage across countries and target groups was 60% of the target population.

Yes they are to a large extent. There are two differences between the two waves of this survey. First, different target groups were selected in Luxembourg, Poland and the UK. Second, questions concerning living conditions, such as on aspects of poverty, housing, etc. were only collected in the second wave (EU-MIDIS II). In some instances, the wording of questions was slightly changed, which strictly speaking can impact on the direct comparability of results. However, both surveys used a similar methodology, applying a multistage random selection of respondents. Having said this it should also be noted that EU-MIDIS II went a step further to improve the representativity of the sample within countries: this could also affect comparability, but the advantage is a more accurate picture of the situation.

All sample surveys are affected by sampling error, given that the survey interviews only a fraction of the total population. Small differences of a few percentage points between groups of respondents have to be interpreted within the range of statistical variation. Only substantial differences between population groups should be considered as evidence of actual differences in the total population. Results based on small sample sizes are statistically less reliable and are flagged in figures and tables. These include statistics based on samples between 20 and 49 respondents. Results based on fewer than 20 respondents are not shown.

The EU-MIDIS II survey further improved the sampling and weighting methods developed for the EU-MIDIS I survey. Therefore, the results of EU-MIDIS II should be a more accurate representation of the situation and experiences of respondents in the countries covered in the two surveys.

The 2016 EU-MIDIS II survey data were weighted in a more sophisticated way. EU-MIDIS II not only took into account the selection probabilities, but also adjusted the samples for non-response and – where possible – for the composition of the target population on selected characteristics. This means that even if the sample in a country is similar in both surveys, the EU-MIDIS II data are more accurate.