The efficiency of an RDS (respondent driven sampling) to reach the latent groups of respondents: by the example of a study of young drug injectors in four towns of Ukraine
The method of respondent driven sampling (RDS) was developed in the early 1990s to address the limitations of a snowball sampling and other sampling methods used for studying the hidden populations. Respondents are selected through their social ties that form the basis for RDS referral chains. This article presents the experience of the first application of RDS in Ukraine to a study of the initiation into injecting drug use among drug injectors of 244 year old and younger and their non4injecting friends.
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