Table 1 Issues encountered during recruitment process and the solutions applied
From: Implementation of web-based respondent driven sampling in epidemiological studies
Issue | Description | Solution |
|---|---|---|
Invite link has already been used. | Some participants shared the link that belonged to them, instead of using the one generated specifically after completing the survey. | When this happened, it was addressed by getting the ID of the participant who sent the repeated link. After finding it, the misused token is given one more use. In addition, the participant who sent the wrong link is given his correct link to be forwarded to his contacts. To prevent this from happening, the survey opening message was edited to add clarity to this instruction. |
Multiple response | One participant answered the survey three times in a row using her unique link and then using the link she generated because of confusion about the coupon system. | The participant was contacted since she left her contact information, the situation was corrected considering the first response as the official response. Two more uses to the link were given. |
One participant answered the survey in two different time periods through the invitation of two different people. | The participant was contacted since she left her contact information, her first response was considered as the official one and she was asked to tell her recruiter to send another invitation to replace her. One extra use was given to the link. | |
Distrust for the study | A few participants called us or told recruiters that they have some distrust for the interest of the study. | If the participant contacted us, we tried to assure them of the seriousness of the study, if it was a recruiter who contacted us, we gave them the information to transfer. If the person recruited still did not want to participate, they were asked to invite another person to participate. |
Seeds whose recruitment did not advance at the beginning | Some seed’s recruitment trees did not advance beyond the first waves. | Since we had contact with the seeds, we communicated with them by showing them their anonymized recruitment tree so that they could try to secure the first two waves with complete answers. If after a while they did not advance, we added a new seed of same characteristics. |
Trouble using the phone | One participant called saying that she did not want to participate because she did not know how to answer the survey on the phone. | We tried to help her through the process but as she showed no interest, she was asked to tell her recruiter to replace her with someone else. |