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Virtual snowball sampling
Virtual snowball sampling is a variation of traditional snowball sampling and it relies on virtual networks of participants. It brings new advantages but also disadvantages for the researcher.
Advantages
- In hard-to-reach and hard-to-involve populations online sampling can better detect individuals of researcher’s interest and allows to expand geographical scope of the studies [1]
- Brings the possibility to increase representativeness of the results [1]
- Virtual sampling can increase number of responses in comparison with traditional snowball sampling. According to Baltar (2012) who used Facebook to search for participants for his study and conduct the research, it was possible to reduce the time necessary for building trust between the participant and researcher. Participants were more likely to share their personal information because the researcher was also sharing personal information on his/her Facebook profile. Increased level of confidence contributed to higher response rate [1]
- Less costly relative to traditional snowball sampling technique [1]
Disadvantages
- Even though the virtual sampling method can increase representativeness of the results, sample selection is biased towards the characteristics of online population such as gender, age, education level, socioeconomic level, etc. [1]
- Target population might not always have access to the Internet [1]
Example of virtual snowball sampling used in research
Virtual snowball sampling technique was used in order to find participants for the study of minority group - Argentinian entrepreneurs living in Spain. About 60 percent of this population has double nationality – both Spanish and Argentinian. Spanish national statistics classifies them as European citizens only and there is no information about the place of birth tied to the profiles of entrepreneurs in Spain either. Therefore referring to national statistics only, made it impossible to build a sample frame for this research. The use of virtual networks in this example of hard to reach population, increased the number of participating subjects and as a consequence, improved the representativeness of results of the study.[1]