NCJ Number
113174
Date Published
1987
Length
17 pages
Annotation
Network sampling (NS) procedures increase the probability of finding a missing child incidents by asking respondents to report about their own households, relatives, neighbors, and coworkers.
Abstract
This procedure was used in a telephone interview survey involving approximately 600 random-digit-dialing households and 300 households selected from police missing child reports for the Chicago Metropolitan Area. NS uncovered substantially greater numbers of missing children than could be found by direct screening. Relatives were the most frequent source of additional information, followed by next-door neighbors. Coworkers were least informed and were reluctant or unable to report addresses or phone numbers of parents of missing children. Almost all of the events reported involved runaways. The percentage of parental or other abductions was very low. Agreement between network and household reports were very low, but most of the discrepancies were for relatively less serious, short-term runaways. Better agreement was found if the event lasted over 1 week or if the child was still missing. An analysis of sampling variances indicated that NS substantially decreased sampling error. Obtaining NS information added about 3 minutes or 25 percent to interviewing time on the initial interview. Substantive results of this and a prior survey were in very close agreement of incidence (.08 and .09 percent), and both indicated that the public feels that missing children are a serious problem deserving more media coverage. 5 tables and 24 references.