Using the Directed Seed Method to Survey Venezuelan Refugees and Migrants in Colombia

Music City Center 

Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) has been adopted worldwide as an important method for sampling vulnerable populations to enable vital decisions about resource allocation and program planning. However, RDS relies on many assumptions about the population and sample dynamics, and continued innovation is needed. We introduce the directed seed method as a modification to RDS where seeds work with an interviewer to enumerate their potential recruits across important characteristics using a diversity recruitment grid and are then instructed on which of these people to recruit. The directed seed method shows promise for enhancing the recruitment of additional diverse individuals and overcoming potential bottlenecks in the population network. We provide an example from surveys conducted among Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Colombia in 2020. We assess the method using existing and novel diagnostic tools, including visual and metric-based techniques like all-points plots, recruitment homophily, expected gain in wave 1 diverse participants, and threshold standard deviation of seed-based characteristic estimates. Finally, we discuss best practices for implementation and inference.

respondent-driven sampling

hard-to-reach population

migrants

social network analysis

hidden population

adaptive sampling 

Survey Research Methods Section