Estimation of the Active Network Size of Kermanian Males

BACKGROUND Estimation of the size of hidden and hard-to-reach sub-populations, suchas drug-abusers, is a very important but difficult task. Network scale up(NSU) is one of the indirect size estimation techniques, which relies onthe frequency of people belonging to a sub-population of interest amongthe social network of a random sample of the general population. In thisstudy, we estimated the social network size of Kermanian males (C) asone of the main prerequisites for using NSU. METHODS A 500 random sample of Kermanian males between 18 and 45 years oldwere interviewed. We asked the size of their active networks using directquestions. In addition, we received the frequency of six names from thevital registry office among Kermanian males, and we estimated Cindirectly using the received frequencies and the frequency of thesenames among the networks of our sample. FINDINGS Although different methods showed quite different Cs between 100 and350, the best estimation for C was 303, which means that on average eachKermanian male knows around 303 males between the age range of 18 and45 years. The estimated C did not have any strong association with thedemographic variables of our subjects. CONCLUSION Using the estimated C we may use the NSU technique to assess thefrequency of many important hidden sub-populations such as drugabusersand those who have sexual contact with men and women.