Thank you for visiting nature. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer.
In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Respondent Driven Sampling study RDS is a population sampling method developed to study hard-to-reach populations.
A sample is obtained by chain-referral recruitment in a network of contacts within the population of interest. Such self-selected samples are not representative of the target population and require weighing observations to reduce estimation bias.
The NMA method relies on modeling the underlying contact network in the population where the RDS was conducted, in agreement with directly observable characteristics of the sample such as the number of contacts, but also with more difficult-to-measure characteristics such as homophily or differential characteristics according to the response variable.
We show that an iterative procedure based on the NMA approach allows unbiased estimations even in the case of strong population homophily and differential activity and limits bias in case of preferential recruitment. We applied the methods to determine HIV prevalence in men having sex with men in Brazilian cities and confirmed a high prevalence of HIV in these populations from 3. Respondent-driven sampling RDS is a method to sample hard-to-reach populations such as injecting drug users, men who have sex with men MSM , and sex workers 1.
