Accessing Sub-Saharan African migrant group for public health interventions, promotion, and research: the 5-wave-approach

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to presents the validation of the 5-wave approach as a method capable of easing access and approximating a representative sample of a hard-to-reach population group (Sub-Saharan African migrants in Germany) for health, and social intervention projects and research.The 5-wave-approach addresses the non-representativeness in the Sudman and Kalton snowballing sampling technique by breaking down the discriminative referral system (snowball system) into five separate components. Data on socio-demographic characteristics collected in a cross-sectional from 532 Sub Saharan African migrants in Germany were compared with data from Germany Foreign Population registry 2016 (AuslaendBevoelkerung 2016) to check for the validity and representativeness of the method.Data comparison shows that sample socio-demographics characteristics reflect population characteristics, as presented in the 2016 German foreign population report.This finding supports the 5-wave-approach as a method capable of capturing a sample of Sub-Saharan African migrants (SSA migrants) that reflects and represents population demographics characteristics. The practicability of this approach offers health and social worker, policymakers and researchers with a communication channel that open up access to the larger group and facilitates the delivery of more efficient intervention projects.