What is the importance of this study? ¥ Initial participants (‘seeds’) are critical to respondent-driven sampling (RDS) as they lead to more participants joining the study. Yet, there is little information available on how seeds that were recruited through online strategies may effect RDS implementation. ¥ We compared online-recruited seeds with offline-recruited seeds, as well as participants recruited by online-recruited seeds with participants recruited by offline-recruited seeds.

Citation: Nathan J Lachowsky, Allan Lal, Jamie I Forrest, Kiffer G Card, Zishan Cui, Paul Sereda, Ashleigh Rich, Henry F Raymond, Eric A Roth, David M Moore, & Robert S Hogg. (2016). Including Online-Recruited Seeds: A Respondent-Driven Sample of Men Who Have Sex With Men, Journal of Medical Internet Research, 18:3, e51. DOI: 10.2196/jmir.5258