over-represent
verb [with object]
1Include a disproportionately large number of (a particular category): using telephone owners as the sampling list would seriously over-represent the better off...
- He commented that an effort is made not to over-represent a particular demographic, but that it is true that ‘many notes are from people that are downtrodden or disenfranchised.’
- This distribution over-represents pre-registration house officers, who make up 10% of the trainee population.
- It over-represents the status quo, the ideological middle, and the wealthy, and leaves everyone else unrepresented.
1.1 (be over-represented) Form a disproportionately large percentage: women are over-represented in fields such as education, English, and psychology...
- Managerial and middle-class occupations are over-represented in its ranks, while the working class is proportionately under-represented.
- Table 6 tells us that, based upon this sample of occupations, immigrants make up a small share of employment in occupations that are growing rapidly and are over-represented in occupations that are labor intensive.
- However, although more women are undertaking non-traditional degrees, they continue to be under-represented in the degrees expected to lead to higher paying occupations, and over-represented in those expected to be lower paying.
Derivatives
over-representation
- In Figure 4.5 we have a very serious over-representation of people who do not watch soaps, because there are 35 people in the sample who do not watch them, which is much larger than the 25 who should be in the sample.
- She stresses that the condition's over-representation in women may be partly because women live longer than men and the disease occurs more frequently in older people.
- We are looking at a 40 per cent unemployment rate in the community and an over-representation in the social system.