Critical review and evaluation of the article “Mental health and substance use in an urban First Nations population in Hamilton, Ontario” by Firestone et al. brought an important issue to the forefront, namely the use of respondent-driven sampling for participant recruitment. The use of respondent-driven sampling during the study’s recruitment period raises questions about the presence of any u...

Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a widely used method for sampling from hard-to-reach human populations, especially populations at higher risk for HIV. Data are collected through peer-referral over social networks. RDS has proven practical for data collection in many difficult settings and is widely used. Inference from RDS data requires many strong assumptions because the sampling design is...