Ed to the course of action of participantdriven recruitment (Halpern; 2005; Miller Rosenstein, 2002; Semaan
Ed for the procedure of participantdriven recruitment (Halpern; 2005; Miller Rosenstein, 2002; Semaan et al, 2009).Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript MethodsData analyzed for this paper had been drawn from a mixedmethod RDS study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (20204) that systematically examined peer recruitment dynamics as well as the network structure of a sample of IDUs to test the validity of RDS statistical inference models’ underlying assumption about peer recruitment and social networks. A total of 526 IDUs in Hartford, CT had been recruited by means of peer referral making use of regular RDS style and procedures (Heckathorn, 997, 2002, 2007; Heckathorn, et alInt J Drug Policy. Author manuscript; out there in PMC 206 September 0.Mosher et al.Page2002; Salganik Heckathorn, 2004). Eligible participants were 8 years and above, residents of Hartford, and had injected illicit drugs within the final 30 days. Participants had been administered a baseline survey as well as a 2month followup survey that incorporated participants’ demographics, risk behaviors, social network composition, and peer recruitment intention, practice and results. Working with a sequential mixed strategies style (Tashakkori Teddlie, 998, 2003), survey demographics have been employed to purposively choose a nested sample (Onwuegbuzie Collins, 2007; Onwuegbuzie Leech, 2007) of participants for qualitative indepth interviews. We applied a maximum variation sampling program (Onwuegbuzie Collins, 2007; Sankoff, 97) to maximize the selection of perspectives and experiences with all the recruitment procedure and to obtain representativeness by means of intracultural diversity. The nested sample was selected from the 2month followup survey sample (eight.2 of baseline sample) to represent the composition on the larger sample in ethnicityrace, homelessness, as well as a balanced proportion of productive recruiters (i.e who effectively referred or a lot more participants) and nonproductive recruiters. Females had been oversampled as a way to capture patterns inside and across gender. This sampling strategy was executed at three points all through the study: in the initially two months of your 2month survey (n20), MRK-016 chemical information midway through recruitment in the complete sample (during months 90 of sample recruitment; n20) and in the end on the study from the final 00 participants in the RDS survey sample (n20). The intent was to capture peer recruitment patterns at later stages within the study as it became more difficult to PubMed ID:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24357672 recruit network members who had not yet participated. Comparison of demographic qualities involving the interview sample and these men and women who didn’t participate in the interview and only took the survey revealed no considerable variations in between the two subsamples (Table ), except on gender as well as the average variety of recruits who returned coupons. We interviewed a larger percentage of girls and productive recruiters as when compared with the larger nointerview survey sample. Even so, we don’t believe that these variations have substantial effect on the generalizability of those findings, because the purpose of this qualitative paper is not to assess the scope of each and every variety of peer recruitment techniques, but rather to develop a deep understanding of your range of recruitment methods inside the context of various participants’ lives and contexts. Study Procedures Inside the formative phase in the study, a group of ethnographers conducted 3 months of outreach and ethnographic field observations to study the existing loca.