background in islamic countries alcohol consumption is considered as against religious values. therefore, estimation of frequency of alcohol consumptions using direct methods is prone to different biases. in this study, we indirectly estimated the frequency of alcohol use in iran, in network of a representative sample using network scale up (nsu) method.   methods in a national survey, about 40...

background abortions are of major public health concern in developing countries. in settings in which abortion is highly prohibited, the direct interview is not a reliable method to estimate the abortion rate. the indirect estimation methods to measure the rate of abortion might overcome this dilemma; they are practical methods to estimate the size of the hidden group who do not agree to partic...

network scale-up is an indirect method for estimating the size of hidden, hard-to-count or high risk populations. social network size estimation is the first step in this method. the present study was conducted with the purpose of estimating the social network size of the tehran province residents and its determinants.maximum likelihood estimation was applied to estimate people's network sizes ...

Background In Islamic countries alcohol consumption is considered as against religious values. Therefore, estimation of frequency of alcohol consumptions using direct methods is prone to different biases. In this study, we indirectly estimated the frequency of alcohol use in Iran, in network of a representative sample using network scale up (NSU) method.   Methods In a national survey, about 40...

Background: Network Scale-up (NSU) method is an indirect method for the estimation of hidden behaviors. In NSU, respondents are asked about the number of members they know from a subpopulation of interest (e.g., injecting drug user) and assume that the prevalence of risky behavior in the networks of a random sample of respondents is similar to that of the population. However, first, we need to ...

Estimating the size of hard-to-reach populations is an important problem for many fields. The network scale-up method (NSUM) a relatively new approach to estimate these by asking respondents question, “How X’s do you know,” where X population interest (e.g., female sex workers know?”). answers questions form aggregated relational data (ARD). NSUM has been used variety subpopulations, including ...