An Adaptation of Respondent Driven Sampling to Recruit Samples of Young Black Women Aged 18 to 25 in Los Angeles

Finding, recruiting, and engaging a representative sample of young Black women (YBW) aged 18 to 25 at risk of HIV in Los Angeles has become a challenge, since they are no longer school aged and there is a sparseness of locations where large clusters of YBW can be found in Los Angeles (e.g. community-based organizations). Research has shown that respondent driven sampling (RDS) approaches provide more diversity and a more cost-effective means of reaching hard-to-reach and hard-to-engage populations than traditional outreach methods. However, traditional RDS methods (i.e. referral tickets) may not be effective for recruiting YBW. To better address these challenges, methods of RDS were adopted. Five seeds (initial participants) were recruited from two beauty salons in Los Angeles County. Two seeds were given five tickets and asked to invite at least three other YBW using the traditional RDS ticketing methods. Three participants were asked to invite at least three other YBW via text message. Over a 3-month period, the traditional ticketing RDS method did not produce any referrals. However, the adapted text message-based RDS method produced referrals for 141 women. Of those 141 women, 121 YBW were eligible and contacted, and 84 YBW were scheduled to participate. The adapted version of RDS showed to be highly effective in recruiting YBW in a short period of time when compared to the traditional RDS recruitment outcomes. This presentation will discuss the challenges, lessons learned and outcomes of the RDS adaptation for the recruitment of YBW aged 18 to 25.