Evaluating Recruitment among Female Sex Workers and Injecting Drug Users at Risk for HIV Using Respondent-driven Sampling in Estonia

Abstract

Few recent publications have highlighted theoretical and methodological challenges using respondent-driven sampling (RDS). To explore why recruitment with RDS may work in some populations and not in others, we assess the implementation of RDS to recruit female sex workers (FSWs) and injection drug users (IDUs) into a human immunodeficiency virus biological and risk behavior survey in Tallinn, Estonia. Recruitment of FSWs was slower and more challenging than that of IDUs. The IDU study recruited 350 participants within 7 weeks, while the FSW study recruited 227 participants over 28 weeks. Implementation modifications that did not negatively impact key RDS theoretical and methodological requirements were used to improve recruitment during the FSW study. We recommend that all RDS studies include a formative research process to involve the participation of target populations and key persons associated with these populations in the study planning and throughout the implementation processes to improve recruitment from the outset and to respond to poor recruitment during data collection.

Respondent-Driven Sampling and the Recruitment of People with Small Injecting Networks

“…Due to differences among studies in the definition of drug or injecting networks, network size comparisons are difficult. Keeping this in mind, the mean injecting network size seems to be in line with previous RDS studies of PWID, which have reported mean network sizes of 15-56 [27][28][29]. However, the network size is substantially larger than what has been reported in studies using other sampling methods, such as targeted sampling and service-based sampling, where average drug network sizes of 2.0-5.4 have been reported [30][31][32][33].…”

Vulnerability to Sexually Transmitted Infections in women who sell sex on the route of prostitution and sex tourism in Central Brazil

“…RDS is a variant of the chainreferral method and has been used in several countries, including Brazil (7,(15)(16) . The use of RDS is based on a referral made by peers and requires social networks that connect the target population (7,16) .…”

“…The latter enabled us to analyze the characteristics of the investigated population with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) as a function of the recruitment patterns and the network size relative to the other participants, taking the sample homophily and the variable balance reach into consideration (16)(17) . The signs and symptoms of STDs according to the WHO's syndromic approach reported by the interviewees are described in table IV.…”

Using IBBS Survey Data and Stakeholder Consensus to Estimate Population Size of Female Sex Workers in Three South African Cities: Results and Recommendations From the 2013-14 South Africa Health Monitoring Survey (Preprint)

“…We used respondent-driven sampling (RDS) methods [9][10][11][12] that have been subsequently adapted for key populations HIV surveillance and population size estimation purposes [13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. We have described elsewhere how RDS recruitment operated in the SAHMS [2].…”