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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

David M. Frost¹, Jessica Dietrich, MPH¹, Rafael F. Narvaez², and Ilan H. Meyer, PhD¹. (1) Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, 722 W 168th Street, New York, NY 10032, 212-305-1952, DFrost@gc.cuny.edu, (2) Sociology Department, New School for Social Research, 65 5th Ave. Room 302, New York, NY 10003

Background: Studies of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals often use recruitment methods that introduce biases into their samples. Random digit dialing methods have focused on neighborhoods that have large proportions of LGB people and community sampling techniques have focused on bars and LGB specific venues. These strategies fail to include LGB people living in more heterogeneous communities and often fail to include ethnic/racial minority LGB individuals. We propose a venue-based community recruitment strategy designed to address these biases. Method: As part of a study of stress, identity and mental health among LGB individuals in New York City, outreach workers visited 207 venues in 24 zip codes. Venue types included bars, non-bars, outdoor venues, events, and community groups. Snowball sampling, limited to two referrals per participant was also used. Results: This strategy yielded a response rate of .62 and a cooperation rate of .82. 396 LGB and 128 straight men and women were interviewed. Participants resided in 128 zip codes and no more than 3.8% resided in the same zip code (see Figure 1). No more than 15% of the sample came from one type of venue. Conclusions: This method was successful in spreading biases inherent to previous public health studies of LGB individuals and provided a more diverse and accurate sampling of LGB individuals across many types of communities. This strategy is useful in public health research as it allows for the inclusion of populations that may be at risk but may not be represented in limited sampling efforts.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify potential biases in popular sampling techniques of LGB populations.
• Apply methods of addressing and correcting for potential biases in community sampling strategies.

Keywords: Methodology,

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation