Weighting Methods for a Study of Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM3)

• Activity Number: 315
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 6, 2013 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Ronaldo Iachan*+ and Teresa Finlayson and Cyprian Wejnert and Binh Le and Gabriela Paz-Bailey and Tonja Kyle
• Companies: ICF International and CDC and CDC and CDC and CDC and ICF
• Keywords: Men who have sex with men, Sampling designs, Multiplicity adjustments, Venue based sampling ; Sampling designs ; Men who have sex with men ; Multiplicity adjustments,

Abstract

The CDC conducts the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance System (NHBS) to monitor prevalence and trends in risk behaviors, HIV testing and use of prevention services among people at high risk for HIV including men who have sex with men (MSM), injecting drug users and low socioeconomic status heterosexuals. MSM are considered a difficult-to-reach population for surveillance and there is no practical way of constructing a sampling frame to permit standard random sampling methods. NHBS uses venue-based sampling (VBS) to recruit MSM into the survey. This paper describes the development of survey weights for the third MSM NHBS cycle (MSM3). The weights were computed separately for each jurisdiction. The weighting process takes into account a two-stage cluster design of venues and day-time periods attended by MSM. Sampling and weighting were stratified by month and site. While a general methodology was developed and applied in all sites, our approach includes specific procedures to account for variations in field operations at each site, such as differences in the data collection period and venue sampling frequency.