Research Article

in

Recruiting Sexual and Gender Minority United States Military Personnel for Research Via Peer Networks: Addressing the Challenges

Have access already?

Get access to this article:

Or get access to the particular issue:

Or get access to the entire journal:

Advertisement

Abstract

Novel sampling methods have been utilized to reach “hidden” and “hard-to-reach” populations. These communities are referred to in this way because they are also stigmatized and may not wish to disclose their identities to researchers. Men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs, and female sex workers, for example, have been sampled using respondent driven sampling (RDS) worldwide. RDS leverages the social ties between members of a group to build rapport and acceptance of a research endeavor, which results in high levels of participation through peer-to-peer recruitment. Despite the success of “state of the art” RDS in reaching “hidden” populations, researchers have encountered challenges in implementing “state of the art” RDS studies in multiple contexts and have addressed these challenges through novel adaptations to the methodology including situations where populations have weak ties to each other, difficulty reaching seed participants, and small personal networks which limit length of recruitment chains and increases number of seeds. In the context of a study of LGBT military personnel using RDS, we adapted seed recruitment methods, explored analytic approaches, and implemented a comprehensive fraud checking protocol to determine if these adaptations would successfully produce a diverse sample of LGBT active duty military personnel. The present paper describes the steps taken to overcome some of the common challenges encountered by other researchers in reaching hidden populations using RDS and offers methodological insights to other researchers who seek to work with this population of interest.

Article usage
Article Usage
Period Abstract Full PDF Total
Apr 2024 9 0 0 9
Mar 2024 5 0 0 5
Feb 2024 4 0 1 5
Jan 2024 14 0 0 14
Dec 2023 7 0 0 7
Nov 2023 22 0 0 22
Oct 2023 2 0 0 2
Sep 2023 8 0 0 8
Aug 2023 2 0 0 2
Jul 2023 5 0 0 5
Jun 2023 124 0 0 124
May 2023 310 1 1 312
Apr 2023 11 1 1 13
Mar 2023 8 0 0 8
Feb 2023 12 0 0 12
Jan 2023 72 0 0 72
Dec 2022 269 0 0 269
Nov 2022 467 1 1 469
Oct 2022 329 0 0 329
Sep 2022 454 0 0 454