Whither RDS? An investigation of Respondent Driven Sampling as a method of recruiting mainstream marijuana users

Whither RDS? An investigation of Respondent Driven Sampling as a method of recruiting mainstream marijuana users

BACKGROUND An important challenge in conducting social research of specific relevance to harm reduction programs is locating hidden populations of consumers of substances like cannabis who typically report few adverse or unwanted consequences of their use. Much of the deviant, pathologized perception of drug users is historically derived from, and empirically supported, by a research emphasis o...

Respondent driven sampling of wheelchair users: A lack of traction?

BACKGROUND Internationally wheelchair users are an emerging demographic phenomenon due to their rapidly increasing life-span coupled with accelerated general population ageing. While having significant healthcare and social implications, basic robust epidemiological information of wheelchair users is often lacking due in part to this population's "hidden" nature. Increasingly popular in epidemi...

The Sensitivity of Respondent-driven Sampling Method

Researchers in many scientific fields make inferences from individuals to larger groups. For many groups however, there is no list of members from which to take a random sample. Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a relatively new sampling methodology that circumvents this difficulty by using the social networks of the groups under study. The RDS method has been shown to provide unbiased estima...

Respondent Driven Sampling as a Counting Process

Respondent-driven sampling to recruit MDMA users: a methodological assessment.

Recruiting samples that are more representative of illicit drug users is an on-going challenge in substance abuse research. Respondent-driven sampling (RDS), a new form of chain-referral sampling, is designed to eliminate the bias caused by the non-random selection of the initial recruits and reduce other sources of bias (e.g. bias due to volunteerism and masking) that are usually associated wi...