PERLA began the design of the surveys at a Princeton conference of all the collaborators in November 2009. There, we settled on the survey samples, which were complicated by careful designing of the oversamples of the indigenous in Mexico and afro-descendants in Colombia. Ultimately, a national survey was designed for each of the four countries, with small changes for the two oversamples, and a fifth questionnaire for afro-descendants in the Costa Chica region in Mexico.

After seven major revisions of the questionnaire, numerous skype calls, hundreds of emails, two meetings of all the collaborators at Princeton University and trips by the author to each of the Latin American sites, the five major survey instruments were completed between August and September of 2010. Depending on weather conditions, the surveys were fielded between August and November of 2010 in each of the four countries.

The PERLA data is currently for use by collaborators and will eventually be made public. On the other hand, the 2010 LAPOP data (with the ethnicity module) are now public.