Hidden populations, such as injection drug users and sex workers, are central to a number of public health problems. However,
because of the nature of these groups, it is difficult to collect accurate information about them, and this difficulty complicates
disease prevention efforts. A recently developed statistical approach called respondent-driven sampling improves our ability
to study hidden populations by allowing researchers to make unbiased estimates of the prevalence of certain traits in these
populations. Yet, not enough is known about the sample-to-sample variability of these prevalence estimates. In this paper,
we present a bootstrap method for constructing confidence intervals around respondent-driven sampling estimates and demonstrate
in simulations that it outperforms the naive method currently in use. We also use simulations and real data to estimate the
design effects for respondent-driven sampling in a number of situations. We conclude with practical advice about the power
calculations that are needed to determine the appropriate sample size for a study using respondent-driven sampling. In general,
we recommend a sample size twice as large as would be needed under simple random sampling.
Keywords Design effects - Hidden populations - Power analysis - Respondent-driven sampling - Sample size - Snowball sampling - Variance estimation
Salganik is with the Department of Sociology and Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University,
New York, NY, USA.