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Smartphone-based Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS): A methodological advance in surveying small or ‘hard-to-reach’ populations

Producing statistically robust profiles of small or ‘hard-to-reach’ populations has always been a challenge for researchers. Since surveying the wider population in order to capture a large enough sample of cases is usually too costly or impractical, researchers have been opting for ‘snowballing’ or...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Sosenko, Filip Lukasz, Bramley, Glen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9302716/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35862382
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270673
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author Sosenko, Filip Lukasz
Bramley, Glen
author_facet Sosenko, Filip Lukasz
Bramley, Glen
author_sort Sosenko, Filip Lukasz
collection PubMed
description Producing statistically robust profiles of small or ‘hard-to-reach’ populations has always been a challenge for researchers. Since surveying the wider population in order to capture a large enough sample of cases is usually too costly or impractical, researchers have been opting for ‘snowballing’ or ‘time-location sampling’. The former does not allow for claims to representativeness, and the latter struggles with under-coverage and estimating confidence intervals. Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) is a method that combines snowballing sampling with an analytical algorithm that corrects for biases that arise in snowballing. For all its advantages, a major weakness of RDS has been around data collection. Traditionally done on-site, the process is costly and lengthy. When done online, it is cheaper and faster but under a serious threat from fraud, compromising data quality and validity of findings. This paper describes a real-life application of a RDS data collection system that maximizes fraud prevention while still benefiting from low cost and speedy data collection.
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spelling pubmed-93027162022-07-22 Smartphone-based Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS): A methodological advance in surveying small or ‘hard-to-reach’ populations Sosenko, Filip Lukasz Bramley, Glen PLoS One Research Article Producing statistically robust profiles of small or ‘hard-to-reach’ populations has always been a challenge for researchers. Since surveying the wider population in order to capture a large enough sample of cases is usually too costly or impractical, researchers have been opting for ‘snowballing’ or ‘time-location sampling’. The former does not allow for claims to representativeness, and the latter struggles with under-coverage and estimating confidence intervals. Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) is a method that combines snowballing sampling with an analytical algorithm that corrects for biases that arise in snowballing. For all its advantages, a major weakness of RDS has been around data collection. Traditionally done on-site, the process is costly and lengthy. When done online, it is cheaper and faster but under a serious threat from fraud, compromising data quality and validity of findings. This paper describes a real-life application of a RDS data collection system that maximizes fraud prevention while still benefiting from low cost and speedy data collection. Public Library of Science 2022-07-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9302716/ /pubmed/35862382 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270673 Text en © 2022 Sosenko, Bramley https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Sosenko, Filip Lukasz
Bramley, Glen
Smartphone-based Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS): A methodological advance in surveying small or ‘hard-to-reach’ populations
title Smartphone-based Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS): A methodological advance in surveying small or ‘hard-to-reach’ populations
title_full Smartphone-based Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS): A methodological advance in surveying small or ‘hard-to-reach’ populations
title_fullStr Smartphone-based Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS): A methodological advance in surveying small or ‘hard-to-reach’ populations
title_full_unstemmed Smartphone-based Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS): A methodological advance in surveying small or ‘hard-to-reach’ populations
title_short Smartphone-based Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS): A methodological advance in surveying small or ‘hard-to-reach’ populations
title_sort smartphone-based respondent driven sampling (rds): a methodological advance in surveying small or ‘hard-to-reach’ populations
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9302716/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35862382
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270673
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