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Home > Arhiva > 2009 > Numar: 3 - 4 > Application of Respondent Driven Sampling to collect baseline data on injecting drug users for HIV risk reduction interventions in Bucharest, Romania

 Application of Respondent Driven Sampling to collect baseline data on injecting drug users for HIV risk reduction interventions in Bucharest, Romania

    by:
  • Alina Bocai (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Romania)
  • Cătălina Iliuţă (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Romania)
  • Marian Ursan (University of Bucharest, Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, 9 Schitu Magureanu Street, District 1, Bucharest. E-mail: marian.ursan@sas.unibuc.ro)
  • Mihail Corciova (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Romania)


One of the challenges in studying HIV risk behaviors and developing prevention interventions among most-at-risk populations, such as injecting drug users (IDUs), is to gather information from a non-biased sample. This paper presents results and lessons learned from applying the respondent-driven sampling (RDS) methodology in an HIV/HBV/HCV behavioral surveillance survey (BSS). The data collection was originally planned to last 6 months with a target recruitment of 400 IDUs. By using RDS, within the current study, we recruited 450 IDUs from Bucharest metropolitan area for a study of behavioral and contextual factors associated with HIV, Hepatitis B and C. All the study participants that consented to enroll in the BSS were anonymously interviewed, and tested of HIV, HBV, and HCV. The data was collected from January to March 2009. We report here on operational matters experienced in RDS implementation, including in recruitment, field operations, data analysis, and on the overall conclusions and lessons learned. The RDS methodology was efficient with respect to time and economics, and especially effective in recruiting a diverse sample of injecting drug users.



Keywords: injecting drug use, behavioral surveillance survey, HIV, respondent driven sampling