Using Respondent Driven Sampling to Recruit Sexual Minority Women.

To recruit a sample of sexual minority women with diversity in regards to age and race, the Chicago Health and Life Experiences of Women study (CHLEW), a longitudinal study of sexual minority women’s health, used respondent driven (RDS) sampling. RDS, a refinement of chain referral sampling, uses initial participants or “seeds” recruited by the research team, to recruit the remainder of the panel. It proved necessary to modify the RDS methodology in order to achieve our recruitment goals. In addition to the recruited “seeds”, we used participants from the original CHLEW sample first recruited in 2001 and participating in their third interview over ten years, to recruit into the new panel. We also recruited new “seeds” near the end of data collection by advertising on listservs and websites. Based on our experiences, recommendations are made to other researchers considering the use of RDS.