Which sampling method involves using initial participants to recruit additional participants, often with incentives for recruitment?

Which sampling method involves using initial participants to recruit additional participants, often with incentives for recruitment?

• A. Respondent-driven sampling
• B. Snowball sampling
• C. Purposive sampling
• D. Convenience sampling

Answer: (A)

This item is about chain-referral sampling that uses participants to recruit others, with incentives to recruit. In respondent-driven sampling, you begin with a small set of initial participants (seeds) who are given incentives to recruit peers from their social networks. Those recruits, in turn, recruit more participants, often across several waves, creating a recruitment chain. The incentive structure encourages wider participation and helps grow the sample efficiently, especially when studying hard-to-reach groups. A distinctive strength of this approach is the accompanying statistical framework that tracks who recruited whom and accounts for differences in network size, allowing researchers to adjust estimates to better reflect the broader population. Snowball sampling also relies on referrals, but it typically lacks the formal tracking and weighting used in respondent-driven sampling, so it’s harder to make population-level inferences. Purposive sampling, by contrast, selects individuals based on specific characteristics without a formal referral process, and convenience sampling relies on who is easiest to recruit.

This item is about chain-referral sampling that uses participants to recruit others, with incentives to recruit. In respondent-driven sampling, you begin with a small set of initial participants (seeds) who are given incentives to recruit peers from their social networks. Those recruits, in turn, recruit more participants, often across several waves, creating a recruitment chain. The incentive structure encourages wider participation and helps grow the sample efficiently, especially when studying hard-to-reach groups. A distinctive strength of this approach is the accompanying statistical framework that tracks who recruited whom and accounts for differences in network size, allowing researchers to adjust estimates to better reflect the broader population.

Snowball sampling also relies on referrals, but it typically lacks the formal tracking and weighting used in respondent-driven sampling, so it’s harder to make population-level inferences. Purposive sampling, by contrast, selects individuals based on specific characteristics without a formal referral process, and convenience sampling relies on who is easiest to recruit.