Identification of Homophily and Preferential Recruitment in Respondent-Driven Sampling.

ABSTRACT: Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a link-tracing procedure used in epidemiologic research on hidden or hard-to-reach populations in which subjects recruit others via their social networks. Estimates from RDS studies may have poor statistical properties due to statistical dependence in sampled subjects' traits. Two distinct mechanisms account for dependence in an RDS study: homophily, the tendency for individuals to share social ties with others exhibiting similar characteristics, and preferential recruitment, in which recruiters do not recruit uniformly at random from their network alters. The different effects of network homophily and preferential recruitment in RDS studies have been a source of confusion and controversy in methodological and empirical research in epidemiology. In this

SUBMITTER: Crawford FW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5860647 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature