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

PLoS One. 2022 Jul 21;17(7):e0270673. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270673. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Bias
  • HIV Infections* / epidemiology
  • Humans
  • Research Design
  • Sampling Studies
  • Smartphone*
  • Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

The study was funded by Crisis (www.crisis.org.uk). GB was the Principal Investigator, FS was a researcher. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.