Douglas D Heckathorn

Douglas D Heckathorn
Cornell University | CU · Department of Sociology

PhD

About

106
Publications
39,115
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19,263
Citations
Additional affiliations
July 1999 - present
Cornell University
Position
  • Professor

Publications

Publications (106)
Article
Full-text available
Respondent-Driven Sampling (RDS) is a method of network sampling that is used to sample hard-to-reach populations. The resultant sample is non-random, but different weighting methods can account for the over-sampling of (1) high-degree individuals and (2) homophilous groups that recruit members more effectively. While accounting for degree-bias is...
Article
Background: Good estimates of key population sizes are critical for appropriating resources to prevent HIV infection. We conducted two capture/recapture studies to estimate the number of PWID currently in Hai Phong, Vietnam. Methods: A 2014 respondent-driven sampling (RDS) survey served as one capture, and distribution of cigarette lighters at d...
Article
Full-text available
Network sampling emerged as a set of methods for drawing statistically valid samples of hard-to-reach populations. The first form of network sampling, multiplicity sampling, involved asking respondents about events affecting those in their personal networks; it was subsequently applied to studies of homicide, HIV, and other topics, but its usefulne...
Article
Network sampling emerged as a set of methods for drawing statistically valid samples of hard-to reach populations. The first form of network sampling, multiplicity sampling, involved asking respondents about events affecting those in their personal networks. When applied to homicide, the results were convergent with victimization surveys. It was...
Article
Respondent-driven sampling (RDS), a link-tracing sampling and inference method for studying hard-to-reach populations, has been shown to produce asymptotically unbiased population estimates when its assumptions are satisfied. However, some of the assumptions are prohibitively difficult to reach in the field, and the violation of a crucial assumptio...
Article
Background: Violent drug markets are not as prominent as they once were in the United States, but they still exist and are associated with significant crime and lower quality of life. The drug market intervention (DMI) is an innovative strategy that uses focused deterrence, community engagement, and incapacitation to reduce crime and disorder asso...
Article
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Combined prevention for HIV among persons who inject drugs (PWID) has led to greatly reduced HIV transmission among PWID in many high-income settings, but these successes have not yet been replicated in resource-limited settings. Haiphong, Vietnam experienced a large HIV epidemic among PWID, with 68% prevalence in 2006. Haiphong has implemented nee...
Article
Full-text available
Classical Respondent-Driven Sampling (RDS) estimators are based on a Markov process model in which sampling occurs with replacement. Given that respondents generally cannot be interviewed more than once, this assumption is counter-factual. We join recent work by Gile and Handcock in exploring the implications of the sampling-with-replacement assump...
Article
Full-text available
Classical Respondent-Driven Sampling (RDS) estimators are based on a Markov Process model in which sampling occurs with replacement. Given that respondents generally cannot be interviewed more than once, this assumption is counterfactual. We join recent work by Gile and Handcock in exploring the implications of the sampling-with-replacement assumpt...
Article
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Aims: To (i) describe an intervention implemented in response to the HIV-1 outbreak among people who inject drugs (PWIDs) in Greece (ARISTOTLE programme), (ii) assess its success in identifying and testing this population and (iii) describe socio-demographic characteristics, risk behaviours and access to treatment/prevention, estimate HIV prevalen...
Article
Full-text available
Several assumptions determine whether respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is an appropriate sampling method to use with a particular group, including the population being recruited must know one another as members of the group (i.e., injection drug users [IDUs] must know each other as IDUs) and be networked and that the sample size is small relative t...
Article
Full-text available
Results are presented of enrolling HIV+ active-injection drug users (IDUs) into a peer-driven intervention (PDI) to improve their adherence to medical care. Using respondent-driven sampling (RDS), which evolved out of the PDI model, the authors recruited and tested 1,097 IDUs, of whom 145 were confirmed to be HIV+. Despite promises of confidentiali...
Article
Leo Goodman (2011) provided a useful service with his clarification of the differences among snowball sampling as originally introduced by Coleman (1958–1959) and Goodman (1961) as a means for studying the structure of social networks; snowball sampling as a convenience method for studying hard-to-reach populations (Biernacki and Waldorf 1981); and...
Article
As the graying of America progresses and the baby boomers begin to enter their twilight years, government and other agencies are deep in discussion over issues of physical and mental health care, Social Security, retirement, and attitudes and policies toward aging. The Research Center for Arts and Culture's study of aging visual artists in New York...
Data
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Model parameter estimates are grouped by ‘visible’ attributes of respondents (location, syphilis serostatus, drug-dealing, drug-use at home, and use of methamphetamine). Each model of recruitment was evaluated using a custom SCFG, comprising the rules listed with each hypothesis: 2-visible, full recruitment model with binary visible states; constra...
Data
Cocke-Kasami-Younger reconstruction of hidden states in recruitment dynamics. All seed individuals in the RDS study were grouped into a shared hidden state with respect to recruitment dynamics (open circles), characterized by ‘boom-or-bust’ recruitment with a relatively high mean number of recruits. Hidden states were ‘transmitted’ from recruiter t...
Data
Model predictions of RDS network component size distribution. The observed RDS network components, or referral trees, were ranked according to size (number of respondents; solid circles). Predicted distributions of ranked component sizes were obtained using maximum likelihood estimates of model parameters for the binomial (crosses), multinomial (op...
Article
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The Sexual Acquisition and Transmission of HIV Cooperative Agreement Program (SATHCAP) examined the role of drug use in the sexual transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from traditional high-risk groups, such as men who have sex with men (MSM) and drug users (DU), to lower risk groups in three US cities and in St. Petersburg, Russi...
Article
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Background: Human populations are structured by social networks, in which individuals tend to form relationships based on shared attributes. Certain attributes that are ambiguous, stigmatized or illegal can create a OhiddenO population, so-called because its members are difficult to identify. Many hidden populations are also at an elevated risk of...
Conference Paper
Background: Adolescent drug users, 11-17 years old, are at risk for bloodborne and sexually transmitted infections. Including adolescent drug users in behavioral and social research is important for developing prevention and treatment interventions. More than 90% of studies with drug users report a mean age of mid-to-late 30s with lower age limits...
Article
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This study tests the feasibility, effectiveness, and efficiency of respondent-driven sampling (RDS) as a Web-based sampling method. Web-based RDS (WebRDS) is found to be highly efficient and effective. The online nature of WebRDS allows referral chains to progress very quickly, such that studies with large samples can be expected to proceed up to 2...
Article
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We examined HIV prevalence and the socioeconomic correlates of HIV infection, sexual risk behaviors, and substance use among Latino gay and bisexual men and transgender persons in Chicago and San Francisco. Data were collected from a sample of 643 individuals (Chicago: n=320; San Francisco: n=323) through respondent-driven sampling and computer-ass...
Article
Full-text available
The population of Latino men who have sex with men (MSM) and who are also injection drug users (IDUs) is understudied. We explored risk behaviors of MSM/IDUs compared with other male IDUs in 2 Mexican border cities. In 2005, IDUs who had injected within the previous 30 days were recruited using respondent-driven sampling (RDS) in Tijuana and Ciudad...
Article
Many populations of interest present special challenges for traditional survey methodology when it is difficult or impossible to obtain a traditional sampling frame. In the case of such "hidden" populations at risk of HIV/AIDS, many researchers have resorted to chain-referral sampling. Recent progress on the theory of chain-referral sampling has le...
Article
To review the scientific, ethical, and regulatory literature because no official guidance exists on remuneration for participant-driven recruitment or on investigators' responsibilities for informing participants of their discordant partnerships. We reviewed the studies that used RDS to recruit injection-drug users (IDUs), 1995-2006, and the releva...
Conference Paper
Background: Hidden populations at elevated risk for HIV, such as illicit drug users and bisexual men of color, can be hard to reach and are not amenable to random sampling. Novel approaches should be developed and tested for studying such populations. Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) seeks to construct samples from populations that lack comprehensi...
Conference Paper
Background: In 2004, NIDA initiated the Sexual Acquisition and Transmission of HIV Cooperative Agreement Program (SATHCAP). Study goal is to model the dynamic behavioral, biological, and environmental processes involved in the sexual transmission of HIV and other STIs from and among men who have sex with men (MSM) and drug users (DUs - defined as u...
Article
Full-text available
Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a network-based method for sampling hidden and hard-to-reach populations that has been shown to produce asymptotically unbiased population estimates when its assumptions are satisfied. This includes resolving a major concern regarding bias in chain-referral samples—that is, producing a population estimate that is...
Article
To characterize heroin and cocaine users in New York City who have changed from injection to non-injection drug administration and to identify factors associated with long-term non-injection use. Two cross-sectional studies of heroin and cocaine users in New York City. New admissions were recruited at drug abuse treatment programs (2000-04) and res...
Article
To compare HIV prevalence among injecting and non-injecting heroin and cocaine users in New York City. As HIV is efficiently transmitted through the sharing of drug-injecting equipment, HIV infection has historically been higher among injecting drug users. Two separate cross-sectional surveys, both with HIV counseling and testing and drug use and H...
Chapter
Full-text available
The purpose of Information on Artists III: Special Focus New York City Aging Artists (IOAIII Aging) is to understand how artists-who often reach artistic maturity and increased artistic satisfaction as they age-are supported and integrated within their communities and how their network structures change over time. Past evidence shows that as people...
Article
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Those who engage in illegal or stigmatized behaviors, which put them at risk of HIV infection, are largely concentrated in urban centers. Owing to their illegal and/ or stigmatized behaviors, they are difficult to reach with public health surveillance and prevention programs. 1 These populations include illicit drug users, sex workers and men who h...
Article
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Beth Israel Medical Center (BIMC), in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH), used respondent-driven sampling (RDS) in a study of HIV seroprevalence among drug users in New York City in 2004. We report here on operational issues with RDS including recruitment, coupon distributio...
Article
We report impact results on the first operating year of an HIV prevention field experiment for injection drug users (IDUs) in two cities in western Russia, comparing a Standard "peer-driven intervention" (PDI) in Bragino to a Simplified-PDI in Rybinsk. The PDI relies on IDUs to educate one another in the community about HIV prevention, and recruit...
Article
Full-text available
A number of sampling methods are available to recruit drug users and collect HIV risk behavior data. Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a modified form of chain-referral sampling with a mathematical system for weighting the sample to compensate for its not having been drawn randomly. It is predicated on the recognition that peers are better able t...
Article
Full-text available
One of the challenges in studying HIV-risk behaviors among gay men is gathering information from a non-biased sample, as traditional probability sampling methods cannot be applied in gay populations. Respondent-Driven Sampling (RDS) has been proposed as a reliable and bias-free method to recruit "hidden" populations, such as gay men. The aim of thi...
Article
Full-text available
Adequate surveillance of hard-to-reach and 'hidden' subpopulations is crucial to containing the HIV epidemic in low prevalence settings and in slowing the rate of transmission in high prevalence settings. For a variety of reasons, however, conventional facility and survey-based surveillance data collection strategies are ineffective for a number of...
Article
Full-text available
Standard statistical methods often provide no way to make accurate estimates about the characteristics of hidden populations such as injection drug users, the homeless, and artists. In this paper, we further develop a sampling and estimation technique called respondent-driven sampling, which allows researchers to make asymptotically unbiased estima...
Article
This paper introduces a theory of group solidarity and a method for measuring it. Solidary groups are characterized by strong internal monitoring and sanctioning systems, strong intra-group ties, high exit costs, and lack of information about resources outside the group. This analysis suggests that all these attributes derive from the choice to inv...
Article
Active drug users with HIV infection suffer from both low utilization of, and adherence to, primary care. Combining drug treatment and primary care on-site reduces these problems significantly because it creates a social support structure; treatment program staffs can monitor patients' adherence and provide ongoing encouragement. But in the United...
Article
Full-text available
Researchers generally use nonprobability methods such as chain-referral sampling to study populations for which no sampling frame exists. Respondent-driven sampling is a new form of chain-referral sampling that was designed to reduce several sources of bias associated with this method, including those from the choice of initial participants, volunt...
Article
Full-text available
Researchers studying hidden populations–including injection drug users, men who have sex with men, and the homeless–find that standard probability sampling methods are either inapplicable or prohibitively costly because their subjects lack a sampling frame, have privacy concerns, and constitute a small part of the general population. Therefore, res...
Article
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A dilemma arises for researchers who sample hidden populations, such as injection drug users (IDUs), and use financial incentives to recruit respondents. To prevent respondent duplication (a subject participates in a study multiple times by using different identities) and respondent impersonation (a subject assumes the identity of other respondents...
Article
This paper describes the use of respondent-driven sampling (RDS) to identify and survey jazz musicians in four U.S. cities - Detroit, New Orleans, New York and San Francisco. RDS has been used previously to sample injection drug users as part of a study of HIV prevention education and services. Through a mechanism of long referral chains and modest...
Article
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The Windham, Connecticut, needle exchange closed in May 1997 after becoming embroiled in a public controversy in which it was blamed for the city's drug problem, discarded syringes, and even the economic decline of the city itself. The authors interviewed injection drug users and conducted a community survey of discarded drug paraphernalia to explo...
Article
We report on the first two years of operation of the Yaroslavl, Russia harm reduction project for injection drug users (IDUs). From October 1996 to September 1998, the project was one of 13 projects in central and eastern Europe that comprised the International Harm Reduction Development Program, funded by the Open Society Institute in New York Cit...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Objective. Since 1985, community outreach efforts to combat acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) among injecting drug users (IDUs) in the United States have overwhelmingly depended on a provider-client model that relies on staffs of professional outreach workers. We report on a comparison of this traditional outreach model with an innovative s...
Article
Whereas many infectious diseases are spread through casual contact and contagion, HIV transmission results from risk behaviors that involve close and often intimate contact. As a result, the transmission of HIV is structured by the social relationships within which these contacts are embedded. Hence, social network analysis is especially suitable f...
Article
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Despite the wealth of scientific findings showing thar needle-exchange programs reduce unsafe injection practices, and that these practices are the direct or indirect cause of one third of new HIV infections in the United States, the figure of needle-exchange in this country remains uncertain, The federal government continues to ban the use of fede...
Article
Despite their diversity, political ideologies divide along a limited number of fault lines, including individualism versus collectivism, and authoritarianism versus democracy. Drawing on contemporary theories of collective action and game theory, this paper proposes a theoretic account of ideology that is based on the hypothesis that ideologies ser...
Article
Full-text available
Since 1985, community outreach efforts to combat acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) among injecting drug users (IDUs) in the United States have overwhelmingly depended on a provider-client model that relies on staffs of professional outreach workers. We report on a comparison of this traditional outreach model with an innovative social netwo...
Article
Full-text available
This edition of The American Sociologist brings together discussions of one of the most contentious issues in the discipline?the place of rational choice in sociology. The participants are six distinguished scholars, five of whom are former American Sociological Association presidents. The contribu tors reflect the diversity of views in the discipl...
Article
Full-text available
A population is "hidden" when no sampling frame exists and public acknowledgment of membership in the population is potentially threatening. Accessing such populations is difficult because standard probability sampling methods produce low response rates and responses that lack candor. Existing procedures for sampling these populations, including sn...
Article
Full-text available
A population is “hidden” when no sampling frame exists and public acknowledgment of membership in the population is potentially threatening. Accessing such populations is difficult because standard probability sampling methods produce low response rates and responses that lack candor. Existing procedures for sampling these populations, including sn...
Article
Full-text available
Rational choice theory is a controversial basis for institutional design. Dire warnings have been issued about its potential effects. This paper examines in detail a single example of rational-choice-based institutional design in light of these warnings. The conclusions are that these warnings are ill-founded because they are based on an inaccurate...
Article
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Theoretical accounts of participation in collective action have become more divergent. Some analysts employ the Prisoner's Dilemma paradigm, other analysts suggest that different social dilemmas underlie collective action, and still others deny that social dilemmas play any significant role in collective action. I propose a theoretically exhaustive...
Article
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AIDS prevention efforts for injection drug users (IDUs) since 1988 in over 60 inner-city areas within the United States have been based on a 'provider- client' model called 'street-based outreach.' We document the research showing that these traditional outreach projects operate under conditions that cause hierarchy and supervision to break down ea...
Article
During the debate over ratifying the U.S. Constitution, both the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists offered inconsistent arguments. They violated principles of transitivity (e.g., statements such as ''A furthers B'' and ''B furthers C'' coexist with the statement ''A hinders C''). Using cognitive mapping to extract the network of causal assertion...
Article
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Drawing on original field research and agency theory, we examine the operations and internal workings of community-based outreach projects to combat AIDS among out-of-treatment injection drug users (IDUs). We show that even though these projects suffered from a host of organizational problems, the response from IDUs was positive and vigorous. Based...
Article
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Several studies have concluded that heterogeneity within a group facilitates the initiation of collective action. However, a recent analysis found that heterogeneity can either facilitate or impede collective action, depending on factors like the strength of the temptation to free-ride. Reconciling these conclusions is difficult because the earlier...
Article
Many recent studies of norm emergence employ the "prisoner's dilemma" (PD) paradigm, which focuses on the free-rider problem that can block the cooperation required for the emergence of social norms. This paper proposes an expansion of the PD paradigm to include a closely related game termed the "altruist's dilemma" (AD). Whereas egoistic behavior...
Article
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A “primitive game” is understood to be any situation of interdependence in which outcomes are represented simply as positive, neutral, and negative. A total of 1,049 strategically distinct 2 × 2 (2 persons with 2 choices each) primitive games have been identified; their main characteristics are briefly summarized.
Article
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We outline a theory of public policy using our transaction space model of contractual analysis. This approach is based on transaction cost economics, game theory, and the contractual paradigm. It treats government activities, including statutes and the organizations that administer them, as long-term contracts negotiated to economize on the costs o...
Article
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The link between external sanctions and intragroup normative control is examined to distinguish the conditions under which the two control systems augment or weaken one another. I construct a dynamic rational choice model that incorporates essential features of the sanction/norm link. The analysis suggests that much social control that appears to r...