Davina P. Durgana and Graham K. Brown

Over the past four years, the Walk Free Foundation has been developing a Global Slavery Index to estimate the level of modern slavery in different countries around the world. We define modern slavery as situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power, or deception.

Any attempt to measure social statistics is fraught with issues of measurement bias and measurement error. When the indicator is as politically sensitive as the Global Slavery Index, it is even more important to address these challenges rigorously and transparently.

This article discusses the main challenges—often ignored or underplayed—in collecting and estimating social statistics and describes the approach taken by the Walk Free Foundation to minimize these problems.

Measurement Error and Measurement Bias in Social Statistics

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