TY - JOUR
T1 - Community understanding of respondent-driven sampling in a medical research setting in Uganda: Importance for the use of RDS for public health research
AU - McCreesh, Nicky
AU - Tarsh, Matilda Nadagire
AU - Seeley, Janet
AU - Katongole, Joseph
AU - White, Richard G.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a widely-used variant of snowball sampling. Respondents are selected not from a sampling frame, but from a social network of existing members of the sample. Incentives are provided for participation and for the recruitment of others. Ethical and methodological criticisms have been raised about RDS. In this study RDS was used to recruit male household heads in rural Uganda. We investigated community members’ understanding and experience of the method, and explored how these may have affected the quality of the RDS survey data. Our findings suggest that because participants recruit participants, the use of RDS in medical research may result in increased difficulties in gaining informed consent, and data collected using RDS may be particularly susceptible to bias due to differences in the understanding of key concepts between researchers and members of the community.
AB - Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a widely-used variant of snowball sampling. Respondents are selected not from a sampling frame, but from a social network of existing members of the sample. Incentives are provided for participation and for the recruitment of others. Ethical and methodological criticisms have been raised about RDS. In this study RDS was used to recruit male household heads in rural Uganda. We investigated community members’ understanding and experience of the method, and explored how these may have affected the quality of the RDS survey data. Our findings suggest that because participants recruit participants, the use of RDS in medical research may result in increased difficulties in gaining informed consent, and data collected using RDS may be particularly susceptible to bias due to differences in the understanding of key concepts between researchers and members of the community.
U2 - 10.1080/13645579.2012.661204
DO - 10.1080/13645579.2012.661204
M3 - Article
VL - 16
SP - 269
EP - 284
JO - International Journal of Social Research Methodology
JF - International Journal of Social Research Methodology
SN - 1364-5579
IS - 4
ER -