IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/evarev/v40y2016i2p87-121.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Using Respondent-Driven Sampling to Recruit Illegal Drug Purchasers to Evaluate a Drug Market Intervention

Author

Listed:
  • Allison J. Ober
  • Jesse Sussell
  • Beau Kilmer
  • Jessica Saunders
  • Douglas D. Heckathorn

Abstract

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 associated with these markets. Although studies show that DMI can reduce crime and overt drug activity, one perspective is prominently missing from these evaluations: those who purchase drugs. Objectives This study explores the use of respondent-driven sampling (RDS)—a statistical sampling method—to approximate a representative sample of drug users who purchased drugs in a targeted DMI market to gain insight into the effect of a DMI on market dynamics. Methods Using RDS, we recruited individuals who reported hard drug use (crack or powder cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or illicit use of prescriptions opioids) in the last month to participate in a survey. The main survey asked about drug use, drug purchasing, and drug market activity before and after DMI; a secondary survey asked about network characteristics and recruitment. Conclusions Our sample of 212 respondents met key RDS assumptions, suggesting that the characteristics of our weighted sample approximate the characteristics of the drug user network. The weighted estimates for market purchasers are generally valid for inferences about the aggregate population of customers, but a larger sample size is needed to make stronger inferences about the effects of a DMI on drug market activity.

Suggested Citation

  • Allison J. Ober & Jesse Sussell & Beau Kilmer & Jessica Saunders & Douglas D. Heckathorn, 2016. "Using Respondent-Driven Sampling to Recruit Illegal Drug Purchasers to Evaluate a Drug Market Intervention," Evaluation Review, , vol. 40(2), pages 87-121, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:evarev:v:40:y:2016:i:2:p:87-121
    DOI: 10.1177/0193841X16656313
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0193841X16656313
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0193841X16656313?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven D. Levitt, 2004. "Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 163-190, Winter.
    2. Roland G. Fryer Jr. & Paul S. Heaton & Steven D. Levitt & Kevin M. Murphy, 2013. "Measuring Crack Cocaine And Its Impact," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(3), pages 1651-1681, July.
    3. Jonas, Adam B. & Young, April M. & Oser, Carrie B. & Leukefeld, Carl G. & Havens, Jennifer R., 2012. "OxyContin® as currency: OxyContin® use and increased social capital among rural Appalachian drug users," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(10), pages 1602-1609.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Magnus Lofstrom & Steven Raphael, 2016. "Crime, the Criminal Justice System, and Socioeconomic Inequality," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 103-126, Spring.
    2. Evans, William N. & Garthwaite, Craig & Moore, Timothy J., 2022. "Guns and violence: The enduring impact of crack cocaine markets on young black males," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    3. Scott Baker, 2013. "Effects of Immigrant Legalization on Crime: The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act," Discussion Papers 12-012, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    4. Mejía, Daniel & Restrepo, Pascual, 2016. "Crime and conspicuous consumption," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 1-14.
    5. O’Flaherty, Brendan & Sethi, Rajiv, 2015. "Urban Crime," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 1519-1621, Elsevier.
    6. Andrew Leigh, 2020. "The Second Convict Age: Explaining the Return of Mass Imprisonment in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 96(313), pages 187-208, June.
    7. Altindag, Duha T., 2012. "Crime and unemployment: Evidence from Europe," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 145-157.
    8. Flamini, Alessandro & Jahanshahi, Babak & Mohaddes, Kamiar, 2021. "Illegal drugs and public corruption: Crack based evidence from California," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    9. d'Este, Rocco, 2022. "Scientific Advancements in Illegal Drugs Production and Institutional Responses: New Psychoactive Substances, Self-Harm, and Violence inside Prisons," IZA Discussion Papers 15248, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Anna Aizer & Joseph J. Doyle, 2015. "Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital, and Future Crime: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(2), pages 759-803.
    11. Luigi Bonaventura, 2011. "Enforcement of regulation, irregular sector, and firm performance: a computational agent-based model," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 99-113, July.
    12. Yoonseok Lee, Donggyun Shin, Kwanho Shin, 2013. "Social Consequences of Economic Segregation," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 29, pages 189-210.
    13. Brian Bell & Anna Bindler & Stephen Machin, 2018. "Crime Scars: Recessions and the Making of Career Criminals," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(3), pages 392-404, July.
    14. Philip A. Curry & Anindya Sen & George Orlov, 2016. "Crime, apprehension and clearance rates: Panel data evidence from Canadian provinces," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(2), pages 481-514, May.
    15. Sourav Batabyal, 2011. "Temporal Causality and the Dynamics of Crime and Delinquency," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 39(4), pages 421-441, December.
    16. Thorsten Chmura & Christoph Engel & Markus Englerth, 2013. "Selfishness As a Potential Cause of Crime. A Prison Experiment," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2013_05, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    17. Geoffrey Poitras, 2018. "The prescription opioid epidemic: an update," Post-Print hal-03680383, HAL.
    18. Parker, Karen F. & Stansfield, Richard & McCall, Patricia L., 2016. "Temporal changes in racial violence, 1980 to 2006: A latent trajectory approach," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 1-11.
    19. Robert Dur & Joël Van Der Weele, 2013. "Status-Seeking in Criminal Subcultures and the Double Dividend of Zero-Tolerance," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 15(1), pages 77-93, February.
    20. Nicholas Ajzenman, Sebastian Galiani, and Enrique Seira, 2014. "On the Distributed Costs of Drug-Related Homicides - Working Paper 364," Working Papers 364, Center for Global Development.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:evarev:v:40:y:2016:i:2:p:87-121. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.