I am looking for some suggestions about assessing the representativeness of a particular dataset I am analyzing.

In this dataset I am looking at the relationship between two variables (e.g X and Y) in a population that is split into five distinct blocks. The main problem is that the data is based upon reports from the public, so some blocks have much more data than others.

The goal is to assess whether the relationship between X and Y differs between the blocks, but also to determine how reliable such estimates are given that we do not have a truly random sample of the overall population.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks

I am looking for some suggestions about assessing the representativeness of a particular dataset I am analyzing.

In this dataset I am looking at the relationship between two variables (e.g., X and Y) in a population that is split into five distinct blocks. The main problem is that the data is based upon reports from the public, so some blocks have much more data than others.

The goal is to assess whether the relationship between X and Y differs between the blocks, but also to determine how reliable such estimates are given that we do not have a truly random sample of the overall population.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks