BMJ 1994;308:5 (1 January)

Editorials

Assessing the human condition: capture-recapture techniques

Evaluating the human condition occurs in many disciplines - for example, epidemiology, sociology, political sciences, criminology, and market research. Despite advances in these fields progress has been sluggish compared with that in the "hard" sciences. A primary force for rapid developments in these sciences has been the discovery and use of new technologies (for example, the polymerase chain reaction, electron microscopy, carbon-14 dating), which increase the precision of measurement and reduce costs, resulting in a rapid accumulation of knowledge.1,2 Human population science has society as its laboratory and "counting humans" as its basis. Counting techniques, however, have changed little this century. The use of capture-recapture techniques could bring about a paradigm shift in how counting is done in all the disciplines that assess human populations.

Historically, the main approach to evaluating human populations has been to find the members of a community with a characteristic of interest and count them . . . [Full text of this article]


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