Short Trainings on Methods for Recruiting, Sampling, and Counting Hard-to-Reach Populations: The H2R Training Program

项目摘要 行为和社会科学研究人员继续努力接触，采样，计数，参与和保留 来自社会弱势和边缘化群体或难以接触到的人群的参与者。难以接触 人口往往是那些在许多疾病和病症方面经历健康差距的人。此类人群 包括：无家可归者和住房无保障者、慢性精神病患者、失学青年， 性工作者、被贩卖的少女、无证移民、帮派成员、街头儿童、 使用毒品、种族/民族少数群体以及性和性别少数群体，例如跨性别者和男性， 和男人做爱有许多原因可以解释为什么这些群体没有被充分代表或包括在行为， 社会科学和临床研究。原因之一是缺乏关于最新方法的培训， 对难以接触的人群进行抽样，并掌握先进的统计技能，在正式的调查中分析复杂的调查数据。 培训项目。此外，估计其数量所需的先进方法并没有在 传统的行为，公共卫生和社会科学学位课程。这些基本技能是 需要推进多方面的研究，以消除健康差距， 为了有效地获得足够数量的难以接触到的人口样本， 用于统计学上强大的研究设计。许多创新，用于吸引，招募和采样难以达到 艾滋病毒研究的人口来源，但在其他行为和社会科学领域仍然没有得到充分利用 research.这项H2 R培训补助金将利用我们对难以接触的人群进行的>15年的研究， 艾滋病毒的风险，以及最近成功的倡议，在加州大学旧金山分校的采样知识中心，建立一个核心， 短期课程，加强指导，并为受训者在难以接触的人群中开展研究 在大学的研究生和初级研究人员以及公共卫生从业人员中， 北方加州的卫生部门。

PROJECT SUMMARY Behavioral and social sciences researchers continue to struggle to reach, sample, count, engage and retain participants from socially disadvantaged and marginalized groups, or hard-to-reach populations. Hard-to-reach populations are often those experiencing health disparities for many diseases and conditions. Such populations include: persons experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity, chronic mental illness, out of school youth, sex workers, trafficked adolescent girls, undocumented immigrants, gang members, street children, people who use drugs, racial/ethnic minorities, and sexual and gender minorities such as transgender persons and men who have sex with men. There are many reasons why these groups are not fully represented or included in behavioral, social sciences, and clinical research. One reason is the lack of training on state-of-the-art methodologies to sample hard-to-reach populations and the advance statistical skills to analyze complex survey data within formal training programs. Moreover, the advanced methods needed to estimate their numbers are not taught in conventional behavioral, public health, and social sciences degree programs. These fundamental skills are needed to advance multiple lines of research to end health disparities, to be more inclusive of diverse populations in research, and to efficiently obtain samples of hard-to-reach populations in large enough numbers necessary for statistically powerful study designs. Many innovations for engaging, recruiting, and sampling hard-to-reach populations originate from HIV research but remain underutilized in other areas of behavioral and social sciences research. This H2R training grant will capitalize on our >15 years of research with hard-to-reach populations at risk for HIV, and a recent successful initiative, the Sampling Knowledge Hub at UCSF, to establish a core of short courses, strengthen mentorship, and initiate lines of research among hard-to-reach populations for trainees and mentors among graduate students and junior researchers at universities and public health practitioners of health departments in Northern California.