Sampling Migrants: How Respondent Driven Sampling Works

Abstract

Migrants are usually considered hard-to-reach for research purposes. This chapter provides an overview of RDS and describes how and why it is superior to other common types of sampling methods used to sample hard-to-reach populations. RDS uses the social network properties of populations to enable peers to recruit their peers. Although the method may appear to be straightforward, there are several important assumptions upon which recruitment and analysis are based. This chapter lays the foundation upon which the other chapters are based.