From: Use of country of birth as an indicator of refugee background in health datasets
Population selection method | Examples of studies that used the method | Strengths of method | Weaknesses of method |
---|---|---|---|
Linked data systems | Norredam, Garcia-Lopez, Keiding et al. 2009 [8] | • Uses a precise definition to accurately select individuals who have humanitarian residence permits. | • Use of the authority definition may misclassify individuals who have a refugee background but a non-humanitarian residence permit. |
Hollander, Bruce, Burstrom et al. 2011 [5] | |||
• Can be used to select asylum seekers and/or refugees as separate groups. | |||
• Not available in all countries or datasets so can be difficult to reproduce the method. | |||
• Facilitates simple results interpretation as the reader can be confident the sample is made up of individuals with a refugee background. | |||
• May be difficulties comparing to countries that have different migration systems or authority definitions. | |||
Datasets from specialized health services | Johnston, Smith & Roydhouse 2011 [10] | • Uses a precise definition to accurately select individuals who have humanitarian residence permits. | • Excludes individuals who have a refugee background but a non-humanitarian residence permit. |
Martin & Mak 2006 [11] | • Can be used to select asylum seekers and/or refugees as separate groups. | • Some to individuals of refugee background may not access specialized refugee health services, thus findings may not generalizable to whole refugee population. | |
• Facilitates simple results interpretation as the reader can be confident the sample is made up of individuals with a refugee background. | |||
• Residence permit type not commonly collected so can be difficult to reproduce the method using non-specialized datasets. | |||
• May be difficulties comparing to countries that have different migration systems or authority definitions. | |||
COB alone as proxy for refugee background | Correa-Velez, Sundararajan, Brown et al. 2007 [19] | • Commonly collected by routine health datasets and therefore an easily reproducible method. | • Accuracy of selecting individuals of refugee background relies on an estimate of what proportion of individuals from each country of birth would be expected to be refugees. |
Correa-Velez & Ryan 2011 [24] | |||
• Can be used to compare findings from countries that have different migration systems or authority definitions. | |||
• Cannot be used to specifically select asylum seekers. | |||
• Not always enough information given to be confident the sample is primarily made up of individuals with a refugee background. |