Young Maria-Elena De Trinidad, Madrigal Daniel S
1Department of Community Health Sciences, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, 650 Charles E. Young Drive South, 36-071 CHS, Box 951772, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1772 USA.
2California Environmental Health Tracking Program, Public Health Institute, 555 12th Street, 10th Floor, Oakland, CA 94607 USA.
Public Health Rev. 2017 Nov 29;38:26. doi: 10.1186/s40985-017-0073-4. eCollection 2017.
Undocumented status is rarely measured in health research, yet it influences the lives and well-being of immigrants. The growing body of research on undocumented status and health shows the need to assess the measurement of this legal status. We discuss the definition of undocumented status, conduct a systematic review of the methodological approaches currently taken to measure undocumented status of immigrants in the USA, and discuss recommendations for advancement of measurement methods.
We conducted a systematic review of 61 studies indexed in PubMed, conducted in the USA, and published from 2004 to 2014. We categorized each of the studies' data source and type, measurement type, and information for classifying undocumented participants. Studies used self-reported or proxy measures of legal status.
Information to classify undocumented participants included self-reported status, possession of a Social Security number, possession of health insurance or institutional resources, concern about deportation, and participant characteristics. Findings show it is feasible to collect self-reported measures of undocumented status.
We recommend that researchers collect self-reported measures of undocumented status whenever possible and limit the use of proxy measures. Validated and standardized measures are needed for within and across country measurement. Authors should provide methodological information about measurement in publications. Finally, individuals who are undocumented should be included in the development of these methodologies.
This systematic review is not registered.
在健康研究中，非法身份很少被衡量，但它会影响移民的生活和福祉。关于非法身份与健康的研究日益增多，这表明有必要评估这种法律身份的衡量方式。我们讨论了非法身份的定义，对目前用于衡量美国移民非法身份的方法进行了系统综述，并讨论了改进衡量方法的建议。
我们对2004年至2014年在美国进行并发表在PubMed上索引的61项研究进行了系统综述。我们对每项研究的数据来源和类型、衡量类型以及用于对非法身份参与者进行分类的信息进行了分类。研究使用了自我报告或代理报告的法律身份衡量方法。
用于对非法身份参与者进行分类的信息包括自我报告的身份、拥有社会安全号码、拥有医疗保险或机构资源、对被驱逐出境的担忧以及参与者特征。研究结果表明，收集自我报告的非法身份衡量方法是可行的。
我们建议研究人员尽可能收集自我报告的非法身份衡量方法，并限制代理报告方法的使用。在国内和跨国衡量中都需要经过验证和标准化的衡量方法。作者应在出版物中提供有关衡量方法的方法学信息。最后，非法身份的个人应参与这些方法的制定。
本系统综述未注册。
