undercover

Etymology

under + cover

adj

1. Performed or happening in secret.
2. Employed or engaged in spying or secret investigation.

noun

1. A person who works undercover.

verb

1. To provide too little coverage.
   The estimates of bias reported here depend on the assumption that 6- to 14-year-olds were undercovered at the same rate as children 0 to 14 years old and that 16- to 17-year-olds were undercovered at the same rate as 16- to 19-year-olds. 2000, Robin R. Henke, Phillipp Kaufman, Stephen P. Broughman, Kathryn Chandler, Issues related to estimating the home-schooled population in theUnited States with national household survey data
   To oversimplify, if black males age 20 to 29 are undercovered by 50 percent, then the first stage sampling weights for black males age 20 to 29 are doubled to properly sum to known population totals. 2004, Gary Orfield, Dropouts in America: confronting the graduation rate crisis, page 116