Rare Element Telephone Screening (RETS): A Procedure for Augmenting the Number of Black Elderly in National Samples

A representative sample of older blacks is difficult and expensive to assemble using standard sampling methods. The paper presents a cost-effective method developed to sample older blacks by telephone using existing information from previous surveys as a basis. Asking black respondents between the ages of 18 and 54 from a national survey and others in their households for referrals to parents or grandparents yielded approximately one older black per black respondent in the original survey.