Successes and Challenges in Recruiting and Retaining Gang Members in Longitudinal Research

• Author: Jillian L. Eidson,Meagan Cahill,Caterina G. Roman
• Published date: 01 October 2017
• Date: 01 October 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204016657395
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Successes and Challenges

in Recruiting and Retaining

Gang Members in Longitudinal

Research: Lessons Learned From

a Multisite Social Network Study

Jillian L. Eidson

1

, Caterina G. Roman

1

, and Meagan Cahill

2

Abstract

Members of hidden or hard-to-survey populations present challenges to social scientists seeking to

engage them in empirical studies, especially if those efforts are longitudinal. In this article, we

document the retention-related successes and failures of a longitudinal, social network-based study

of active and desisting street gang members in Philadelphia, PA, and the District of Columbia. A

purposive sample was used to identify and track 229 gang members at three points in time over 2

years to explore how the social networks of gang members change. Although gang members have

many factors in common with other hidden populations, their criminal behavior and involvement

with the justice system, coupled with the sensitivity of the social network survey questions for this

study, created hurdles to maintaining research contact over time. With continued and systematic

documentation of successes and challenges, academics can build an extensive backdrop from which

to continue to study gang youth. If the field cannot devise cost-effective and transferable ways to

study gangs beyond single-gang ethnographies, it will limit its understanding of important processes

related to gang behavior, including gang joining and desistance.

Keywords

field methods, gang desistance, hard-to-survey, hidden populations

Across the social sciences, even with recent advances in computer technology, there remain great

challenges in rigorously studying justice-involved populations, such as street gangs, or those

involved in particular high-risk behaviors, such as prostitution or intravenous (IV) drug use. These

groups, often referred to as ‘‘hidden populations’’ or ‘‘hard to survey,’’ are understudied because of

the complexity of obtaining data about them. In particular, high-risk adolescents and young adults

who are not attached to a traditional institution such as school or work present additional data

1

Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

2

RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Caterina G. Roman, Temple University, 1115 Polett Walk, 5th Fl Gladfelter Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA.

Email: croman@temple.edu

Youth Violence and JuvenileJustice

2017, Vol. 15(4) 396-418

ªThe Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/1541204016657395

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collection-related difficulties. Recognizing the inherent challenges in procuring officially recorded

data (e.g., academic records, health data, wage records, etc.) and cross-systems data, many research-

ers turn to self-report data.

While there are many published works reporting the results of studies of hard-to-survey and

hidden populations, there are few pieces which focus mainly on the methodologies used to complete

these undertakings (Lyberg et al., 2014). In addition to this gap in the literature on hidden and hard-

to-survey populations in general, in gang research specifically, there have been calls for studies

employing larger sample sizes and longitudinal efforts to better measure gang processes such as

group identity and gang desistance (Pyrooz & Decker, 2011; Pyrooz, Sweeten, & Piquero, 2013;

Sweeten, Pyrooz, & Piquero, 2013). Yet there remains little published guidance on field methods to

aid researchers in longitudinal studies of gang processes.

This article begins to address the gap in the literature by discussing strategies to recruit and

retain one specific hidden group—gang members. We focus primarily on strat egies and issues

related to retention of gang members, but because methods of recruitment can be related to

retention success, we also touch on recruitment. Surprisingly, gang members are not commonly

described in the literature on field methods with hidden populations. Although researchers have

been studying gangs for decades and tens of thousands of gang members are represented in social

science research, published studies have often employed qualitative methods such as ethnography

(Curtis, 2010) or use data from a few well-known longitudinal studies that started with a sample of

school-based youth, such as the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A .T.) program

evaluations (Esbensen, Osgood, Taylor, Peterson, & Freng, 2001; Esben sen, Peterson, Taylor, &

Osgood, 2012) or the Pittsburgh Youth Study and Rochester Youth Development Study, designed

to examine delinquency and criminal behavior (Huizinga, Loeber, & Thornberry, 1995; Thorn-

berry, Huizinga, & Loeber, 2004). The Denver Youth Survey is similar to the Pittsburgh and

Rochester studies, but it drew its youth sample from randomly selected households in high-risk

neighborhoods (Thornberry et al., 2004).

These studies had large enough youth samples at baseline to obtain a sufficient number of gang

members over multiple waves, enabling hypothesis testing, but remain limited in many facets with

regard to producing valid and generalizable data on some gang processes. For instance, although

some of these data sets have yielded rich information on the reasons why youth join gangs (Carson,

Peterson, & Esbensen, 2013; Pyrooz & Decker, 2011; Sweeten et al., 2013), the data sets are less

suitable for examining why these individuals choose to leave gangs because the surveys were not

designed to capture detailed information on gang processes that would inform gang desistance. In

addition, the resulting research products from these studies have included very few published works

on the lessons learned for recruiting and retention, and the few that have, do not focus specifically on

gang members.

In this article, we document the successes and failures of a longitudinal, social network- based

study of active and desisting street gang members ages 14–25 in Philadelphia, PA, and the

District of Columbia (DC). The study we describe specifically targeted active gang members,

as opposed to youth who might be gang members or were at risk of joining a gang, to ensure a

relatively large sample of active gang members. Because obtainingavalidsamplingframeof

gangs and their members from the two cities was not feasible, we relied on nonprobability

sampling methods, with a focus on widespread recruitment of gang members from a range of

street gangs and crews. The goals of the study were exploratory and descriptive: to describe how

social networks of gang members change over time and to develop hypotheses related to how

personal social networks might be associated with leaving a gang. Primary data collection over

time is costly, and hence, carefully targeting and tracking the ‘‘eligible’’ population is paramount

for gaining insights into gang processes and drawing conclusions amid the likely loss of subjects

over time.

Eidson et al. 397