Cautionary comments on an ethnographic tale gone wrong

The International Journal on Drug Policy
Lawrence J Ouellet

Abstract

Greg Scott's paper, "'They got their program, and I got mine": a cautionary tale concerning the ethical implications of using respondent-driven sampling to study injection drug users' (Scott, 2008) is seriously flawed by (1) a near complete lack of context in assessing ethical implications of respondent-driven sampling, (2) ignoring the ethnographer's impact on what is observed, (3) a seemingly bedrock belief that the intimacy of ethnographic interviews produces truth, and (4) a misreading of power relationships. Some scenarios depicted in the paper appear inauthentic and the consistency of reported hustles strains credibility. The paper fails further by not situating respondent-driven sampling within the broader array of word-of-mouth recruiting methods and by ignoring advantages RDS may confer both in improving the quality of data and in anticipating the possibility of coercive recruiting.

References

Jul 1, 1996·Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes and Human Retrovirology : Official Publication of the International Retrovirology Association·W W WiebelM U O'Brien
Jan 5, 2001·Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes : JAIDS·L J OuelletE Monterroso
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May 12, 2007·Addiction·Perry N HalkitisJoseph J Palamar

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Citations

May 28, 2009·Journal of Urban Health : Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine·Martin Y IguchiWilliam A Zule
Mar 17, 2010·The American Journal of Bioethics : AJOB·Craig L Fry
Jan 1, 2015·Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A, (Statistics in Society)·Krista J GileMatthew J Salganik
Jul 5, 2015·The International Journal on Drug Policy·Heather I MosherMargaret R Weeks
Apr 4, 2015·Social Networking·Bilal KhanTravis Wendel
Feb 22, 2012·The International Journal on Drug Policy·Pavlo SmyrnovOksana Matiyash

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