SynthesisSystematic reviews2015
Hard-to-reach populations of men who have sex with men and sex workers: a systematic review on sampling methods.
Synthesis in Systematic reviews, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Incentivizing adherence to pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV prevention: a randomized pilot trial among male sex workers in Mexico.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2025Trial
- Homophobia, economic precarity and the well-being of sexual and gender diverse people in a 153-country survey.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Viability of Web-Based Respondent-Driven Sampling of Belgian Men Who Have Sex With Men: Process Evaluation.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Article
- Hard-to-Reach or Hardly Reached? The "Difficulty" of Engaging Cisgender Black Females in Sexual Health Research.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2023Article
- Development of An Acceptance Based PrEP Intervention (Journal of contextual behavioral science · 2023Article
- De-medicalized and decentralized HIV testing: a strategy to test hard-to-reach men who have sex with men in Cameroon.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Article
- Social Determinants of Transactional Sex in a Sample of Young Black and Latinx Sexual Minority Cisgender Men and Transgender Women.The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2022Article
- The global migration network of sex-workers.Journal of computational social science · 2022Article
- Sexual Behaviors and Factors Associated with Condomless Sexual Practice in Colombian Men Who Have Sex with Men at High Risk of HIV Transmission.Archives of sexual behavior · 2021Article
- Comparing recruitment strategies to engage hard-to-reach men who have sex with men living with HIV with unsuppressed viral loads in four US cities: Results from HPTN 078.Journal of the International AIDS Society · 2021Article
- Improving Underestimation of HIV Prevalence in Surveys Using Time-Location Sampling.Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine · 2021Article
- Identifying high risk subgroups of MSM: a latent class analysis using two samples.BMC infectious diseases · 2019Article
- Transactional sex among men who have sex with men participating in the CohMSM prospective cohort study in West Africa.PloS one · 2019Article
- HIV Research with Men who Have Sex with Men (MSM): Advantages and Challenges of Different Methods for Most Appropriately Targeting a Key Population.AIMS public health · 2017Review
- Barriers to Viral Suppression Among Female Sex Workers: Role of Structural and Intimate Partner Dynamics.Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999) · 2016Article
- Behavioral Interventions to Enhance PrEP Uptake Among Black Men Who Have Sex With Men: A Review.The Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care : JANACReview
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn public health, hard-to-reach populations are often recruited by non-probabilistic sampling methods that produce biased results. In order to overcome this, several sampling methods have been improved and developed in the last years. The aim of this systematic review was to identify all current methods used to survey most-at-risk populations of men who have sex with men and sex workers. The review also aimed to assess if there were any relations between the study populations and the sampling methods used to recruit them. Lastly, we wanted to assess if the number of publications originated in middle and low human development (MLHD) countries had been increasing in the last years.
methodsA systematic review was conducted using electronic databases and a total of 268 published studies were included in the analysis.
resultsIn this review, 11 recruitment methods were identified. Semi-probabilistic methods were used most commonly to survey men who have sex with men, and the use of the Internet was the method that gathered more respondents. We found that female sex workers were more frequently recruited through non-probabilistic methods than men who have sex with men (odds = 2.2; p < 0.05; confidence interval (CI) [1.1-4.2]). In the last 6 years, the number of studies based in middle and low human development countries increased more than the number of studies based in very high and high human development countries (odds = 2.5; p < 0.05; CI [1.3-4.9]).
conclusionsThis systematic literature review identified 11 methods used to sample men who have sex with men and female sex workers. There is an association between the type of sampling method and the population being studied. The number of studies based in middle and low human development countries has increased in the last 6 years of this study.
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