Small-community-based surveys

Rapid, small surveys are routinely done in much of the developing world but are less common in the United States. We present as an example a rapid sur vey of immunization status and other factors in a predominantly Hispanic re gion in Los Angeles. The survey united county employees, students, and comm unity volunteers, first to enumerate the eligible population and then to co nduct in-person interviews. Sampling was done in two stages in a downtown r egion of Los Angeles. Over the course of two weekends and during clean-up t he following week, volunteers and others enumerated 718 eligible children i n 30 clusters (i.e. groups of blocks). At the second stage, also in two wee kends with midweek clean-up, we selected by simple random sample 10 childre n per cluster. The parents or legal guardians of 270 children were intervie wed about vaccination issues, including home presence of an immunization ca rd. Nearly one fourth of the respondents did not have a home telephone numb er and thus would have been underrepresented in a telephone survey. Informa tion from such rapid surveys is important for local program planning and ev aluation.