Evaluation of respondent-driven sampling in seven studies of people who use drugs from rural populations: findings from the Rural Opioid Initiative.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Accurate prevalence estimates of drug use and its harms are important to characterize burden and develop interventions to reduce negative health outcomes and disparities. Lack of a sampling frame for marginalized/stigmatized populations, including persons who use drugs (PWUD) in rural settings, makes this challenging. Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is frequently used to recruit PWUD. However, the validity of RDS-generated population-level prevalence estimates relies on assumptions that should be evaluated.

Methods

RDS was used to recruit PWUD across seven Rural Opioid Initiative studies between 2018-2020. To evaluate RDS assumptions, we computed recruitment homophily and design effects, generated convergence and bottleneck plots, and tested for recruitment and d

SUBMITTER: Rudolph AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11036624 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature