Enhancing the sample diversity of snowball samples: Recommendations from a research project on anti-dam movements in Southeast Asia

Julian Kirchherr and Katrina Charles

PLOS ONE, 2018, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-17

Abstract: Snowball sampling is a commonly employed sampling method in qualitative research; however, the diversity of samples generated via this method has repeatedly been questioned. Scholars have posited several anecdotally based recommendations for enhancing the diversity of snowball samples. In this study, we performed the first quantitative, medium-N analysis of snowball sampling to identify pathways to sample diversity, analysing 211 reach-outs conducted via snowball sampling, resulting in 81 interviews; these interviews were administered between April and August 2015 for a research project on anti-dam movements in Southeast Asia. Based upon this analysis, we were able to refine and enhance the previous recommendations (e.g., showcasing novel evidence on the value of multiple seeds or face-to-face interviews). This paper may thus be of particular interest to scholars employing or intending to employ snowball sampling.

Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0201710 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 01710&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0201710

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0201710

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().