Assessing Respondent Driven Sampling for Network Studies in Ethnographic Contexts

Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) is generally considered a methodology for recruiting “hard-to-reach” populations for social science research. More recently, Wejnert has argued that RDS analysis can be used for general social network analysis as well (where he labels it, RDS-SN). In this article, we...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Dombrowski, Kirk, Khan, Bilal, Moses, Joshua, Channell, Emily, Misshula, Evan
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 2013
Subjects:
Respondent Driven Sampling
Labrador Inuit
Ethnographic Methods
Network Sampling
Arctic Social Science
Family
Life Course
and Society
Social Psychology and Interaction
Sociology
Arctic
Canada
Nain
inuit
Online Access:https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sociologyfacpub/223
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/context/sociologyfacpub/article/1229/viewcontent/Dombrowski_AA_2013_Assessing_Respondent_Driven.pdf
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Summary:Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) is generally considered a methodology for recruiting “hard-to-reach” populations for social science research. More recently, Wejnert has argued that RDS analysis can be used for general social network analysis as well (where he labels it, RDS-SN). In this article, we assess the value of Wejnert’s RDS-SN for use in more traditional ethnographic contexts. We employed RDS as part of a larger social network research project to recruit n = 330 community residents (over 17 years of age) in Nain, a predominantly (92%) aboriginal community in northern Labrador, Canada, for social network interviews about food sharing, housing, public health, and community traditions. The peer referral chains resulted in a sample that was then analyzed for its representativeness by two means—a comparison with the Statistics Canada 2006 Census of the same community, and with house-by-house demographic sur- veys carried out in the community as part of our research. The results show a close fit with available community statistics and our own survey. As such, we argue that the RDS sampling used in Nain was able to provide a useful and near-representative sample of the community. To demonstrate the usefulness of the results, the referral chains are also analyzed here for patterns in intragroup and intergroup relation- ships that were apparent only in the aggregate.

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