ABSTRACT
A bias that tends to be built into studies of lesbians and gay men is the degree to which research participants are "gay-community attached". Historically, snowball, or chain referral, sampling was developed to study people with drug addiction and the even more hidden population of people who had recovered from opiate addiction without treatment. The approaches develop the potential to use insider status and build incentives into research. Further evidence that advertising in mainstream media will reach a less gay community–attached population comes from a more recent study by Weatherburn et al. Furthermore, language is often unstable and can cause serious misunderstandings in the research process. The next stage of the research was to train the peer researchers so that they could recruit more participants for interviewing. The model for conducting this training followed guidelines set by those using indigenous interviewers and peer education programs.
