Contents
How do you implement a snowball sample?
Snowball sampling consists of two steps:
- Identify potential subjects in the population. Often, only one or two subjects can be found initially.
- Ask those subjects to recruit other people (and then ask those people to recruit. Participants should be made aware that they do not have to provide any other names.
Where is snowball sampling used?
Snowball sampling is usually used in cases where there is no precalculated list of target population details (homeless people), there is immense pain involved in contacting members of the target population (victims of rare diseases) , members of the target population are not inclined towards contributing due to a …
What is virtual snowball sampling?
As sample members are not selected from a sampling frame, snowball samples are subject to numerous biases. For example, people who have many friends are more likely to be recruited into the sample. When virtual social networks are used, then this technique is called virtual snowball sampling.
Can snowball sampling be used in quantitative research?
Snowball subject recruitment can be used in both quantitative and qualitative research and relies on the social networks of the participants to gather people for the study.
Why is Snowball not representative?
Disadvantages of Snowball Sampling Representativeness of the sample is not guaranteed. The researcher has no idea of the true distribution of the population and of the sample. Sampling bias is also a fear of researchers when using this sampling technique. Initial subjects tend to nominate people that they know well.
Why is snowball sampling bad?
Is snowball sampling purposive?
Snowball sampling, in general application, is a type of convenience sample. If you are trying to recruit people who are difficult to identify or have to meet certain criteria to participate, then snowball sampling can be used to ease data collection. This use of snowballing is a type of purposive sampling.
Is snowball sampling biased?
Like any nonrandom sampling method, snowball sampling does not guarantee representation and there is no way of knowing how precise it really is. This method is particularly susceptible to sampling bias. Consequently, the sampling will access only one subgroup of the population to be studied.
Why is snowball sampling rarely used?
The researcher has little control over the sampling method. The subjects that the researcher can obtain rely mainly on the previous subjects that were observed. Representativeness of the sample is not guaranteed. The researcher has no idea of the true distribution of the population and of the sample.
Is snowball sampling representative?
Given the nature of snowball sampling, it is not considered a representative sample for statistical purposes. However, it is a very good technique for conducting exploratory research and/or qualitative research with a specific and relatively small population that is hard to identify or locate.