A statistical method widely used to adjust for underascertainment in studies of prevalence is capture-recapture. This methodology can estimate the size of populations from restricted samples and can therefore estimate underascertainment in population surveys.

Capture-recapture is valid when 4 requirements are met:

1. No change in population between data gathering from different sources

2. Cases from different sources can be matched

3. Each member of the population has the same chance of being included in each data source

4. The data sources are independent of each other.