Respondent-Driven Sampling in Hidden Populations
Summary
Respondent-Driven Sampling (RDS) is a chain-referral methodology designed to estimate characteristics of populations that lack a well-defined sampling frame, often due to stigma, legal constraints or social marginalisation. The process begins with a small number of initial participants, or “seeds”, who recruit peers through controlled coupon distribution, creating recruitment waves that ideally reach equilibrium in sample composition. By recording each participant’s network size and recruitment pathways, analysts apply specialised weighting procedures to adjust for differential network degree and homophily, thereby reducing bias in prevalence and population-size estimates. Originally developed for epidemiological studies of HIV risk among injecting drug users, men who have sex with men and sex workers, RDS has since been adapted for broader applications—including conflict mortality estimation and labour-market research among informal workers. Recent innovations include web-based RDS platforms that harness digital communication channels, while methodological advances have focused on optimising design effects, enhancing sample diversity and refining analytic models to bolster the rigour and global relevance of findings.
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Respondent-Driven Sampling in Hidden Populations publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in respondent-driven sampling in hidden populations across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Respondent-Driven Sampling (RDS): A chain-referral sampling method that uses participants’ social networks and probability-based estimators to infer population characteristics in hard-to-reach groups.
Hidden Populations: Groups for which no comprehensive sampling frame exists, often due to stigma or legal barriers, such as people who inject drugs or undocumented migrants.
Seeds: Initial participants selected to begin recruitment chains in an RDS study, chosen to reflect diverse segments of the target population.
Recruitment Waves: Iterative rounds of peer recruitment in which each participant recruits a predefined number of others, forming recruitment chains.
Homophily: The tendency for individuals to recruit peers similar to themselves, which can induce bias if not accounted for analytically.
Network Degree: The self-reported number of social contacts a participant has within the target population, used to compute sampling weights.
References
- Improving web-based respondent-driven sampling performance among men who have sex with men in the Netherlands. PLOS Digital Health (2023).
- Design and implementation of a web-based, respondent-driven sampling solution. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making (2023).
- Respondent-Driven Sampling: a Sampling Method for Hard-to-Reach Populations and Beyond. Current Epidemiology Reports (2022).
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