Asymptotic seed bias in respondent-driven sampling

DOI10.1214/20-EJS1698MaRDI QIDQ2180072zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Yuling Yan, Karl Rohe, Bret Hanlon, Sebastien Roch

Publication date 13 May 2020

Published in Electronic Journal of Statistics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.10593, https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.ejs/1586397684

zbMATH Keywords

Galton-Watson processlimit distributionVolz-Heckathorn estimator

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Functional limit theorems; invariance principles (60F17) Applications of Markov chains and discrete-time Markov processes on general state spaces (social mobility, learning theory, industrial processes, etc.) (60J20) Branching processes (Galton-Watson, birth-and-death, etc.) (60J80) Sampling theory, sample surveys (62D05) Asymptotic distribution theory in statistics (62E20)

Abstract: Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) collects a sample of individuals in a networked population by incentivizing the sampled individuals to refer their contacts into the sample. This iterative process is initialized from some seed node(s). Sometimes, this selection creates a large amount of seed bias. Other times, the seed bias is small. This paper gains a deeper understanding of this bias by characterizing its effect on the limiting distribution of various RDS estimators. Using classical tools and results from multi-type branching processes (Kesten and Stigum, 1966), we show that the seed bias is negligible for the Generalized Least Squares (GLS) estimator and non-negligible for both the inverse probability weighted and Volz-Heckathorn (VH) estimators. In particular, we show that (i) above a critical threshold, VH converge to a non-trivial mixture distribution, where the mixture component depends on the seed node, and the mixture distribution is possibly multi-modal. Moreover, (ii) GLS converges to a Gaussian distribution independent of the seed node, under a certain condition on the Markov process. Numerical experiments with both simulated data and empirical social networks suggest that these results appear to hold beyond the Markov conditions of the theorems.

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Cites work

• A critical threshold for design effects in network sampling
• Additional Limit Theorems for Indecomposable Multidimensional Galton-Watson Processes
• Central limit theorems for network driven sampling
• Generalized least squares can overcome the critical threshold in respondent-driven sampling
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2001586 (Why is no real title available?)
• Markov chains and mixing times. With a chapter on ``Coupling from the past by James G. Propp and David B. Wilson.
• Markov chains indexed by trees
• Probability

Cited in

(5)

• Central limit theorems for network driven sampling
• Respondent-driven sampling and sparse graph convergence
• Generalized least squares can overcome the critical threshold in respondent-driven sampling
• Bias-variance and breadth-depth tradeoffs in respondent-driven sampling
• Sampling distributions and estimation for multi-type branching processes

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