The respondents to the General Survey of the Soviet Interview Project are former Soviet citizens who immigrated to the United States. Surveys of Soviet emigrants have relied on a variety of sampling techniques. Some have used snowball samples in which early respondents to the survey help to recruit later respondents. Others have used quota samples in which a priori target numbers of respondents with certain specified combinations of characteristics are established, and the sampling stops when the targeted number of interviews is completed.

SIP General Survey I used a stratified random sample, based on the characteristics of the emigrants when they lived in the Soviet Union. Individual respondents were selected from a list that contained information about all eligible persons, defined by explicit eligibility criteria. The probability that given individuals were selected depended on the educational, regional, nationality, and city-size strata in which they fell. An effort was made to complete an interview with every selected individual. This method of sampling is less susceptible to self-selection by the respondents into the survey than snowball sampling or quota sampling, and it permits greater control over sample composition.

This appendix describes how the SIP General Survey I sampling frame and sample were defined. It analyzes the response rates and describes the basic demographic characteristics of the sample. And it discusses the issue of representativeness of the respondents: To what referent Soviet population can the results of the survey be generalized?