Recruitment of heterosexual couples in public health research: a study protocol

Abstract

BackgroundPublic health research involving social or kin groups (such as sexual partners or family members), rather than samples of unrelated individuals, has become more widespread in response to social ecological approaches to disease treatment and prevention. This approach requires the development of innovative sampling, recruitment and screening methodologies tailored to the study of related individuals.MethodsIn this paper, we describe a set of sampling, recruitment and screening protocols developed to enlist urban, drug-using, heterosexual couples into a public health research study. This population is especially hard to reach because they are engaged in illegal and/or stigmatized behaviors. The protocols were designed to integrate adaptive sampling, street- and referral-based recruitment, and screening procedures to verify study eligibility and relationship status.DiscussionRecruitment of heterosexual couples through one partner, preferably the female, can be an effective enlistment technique. Verification of relationship status is an important component of dyadic research. Comparison of parallel questionnaires administered to each member of a dyad can aid in the assessment of relationship status. However, multiple independent sources of information should be used to verify relationship status when available. Adaptive sampling techniques were effective in reaching drug-using heterosexual couples in an urban setting, and the application of these methods to other groups of related individuals in clinical and public health research may prove to be useful. However, care must be taken to consider potential sources of sampling bias when interpreting and generalizing study results.

Individual and Couple‐Level Risk Factors for Hepatitis C Infection among Heterosexual Drug Users: A Multilevel Dyadic Analysis

“…All participants were offered counseling and testing for HIV and hepatitis B and C. Pre-and posttest counseling was conducted using standard protocols as outlined by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. A more-detailed description of the sample, research design, and data collection methods is shown in McMahon et al [25]. Of the 353 couples enrolled in the study, 265 voluntarily provided blood samples for HCV antibody screening and were included in the present analysis.…”

A Review of R-packages for Random-Intercept Probit Regression in Small Clusters

“…More specifically, we will target binary data from small clusters, with a particular focus on clusters of size two, as such settings have proven difficult for the available GLMM methodologies [11,12]. Clusters of size two are frequently encountered in practice, e.g., when studying dyads [13], in ophthalmology data [14], in twin studies [15], or when analyzing measurements from a 2-period -2-treatment crossover study [16].…”

A guide for multilevel modeling of dyadic data with binary outcomes using SAS PROC NLMIXED

“…To illustrate the application of multilevel modeling to dyadic data with binary outcomes, we employed data from a recent epidemiological study conducted to examine risk for hepatitis C and other viral infections among drug-using couples in East Harlem, New York City (Tortu et al, 2003;McMahon et al, 2003). Heterosexual couples reporting recent substance use were recruited from East Harlem and administered risk assessment surveys and screened for viral hepatitis C antibodies.…”

“…Heterosexual couples reporting recent substance use were recruited from East Harlem and administered risk assessment surveys and screened for viral hepatitis C antibodies. Protocols for this study have been described in detail elsewhere (McMahon et al, 2003).…”