Snowball Sampling

Write your own response using the points provided in the snowball sampling handout.

One advantage of using snowball sampling is that it is fairly easy to acquire a large sample without having to acquire it yourself, as you are asking participants to find others who are willing to take part in the study. This means that time and expense can be spent on other aspects of the study.

However, a disadvantage of snowball sampling is that it isn’t very representative. This is because the people approached by the researcher/s would have only asked others who they would have known. Therefore, the participants are all likely to belong to the same strata and a number of individuals who might be useful will not have been considered.

An advantage of snowball sampling is when the researcher has a contact who then introduces them to other people/contacts to take part in the research. It is a very efficient way of obtaining a sample in terms of accessibility and cost. The researcher has to put little effort into obtaining the sample because their contact is the one who introduces the researcher to the people in the sample. Therefore little effort is needed and the researcher has easy access to the participants. Furthermore, it’s a cheaper method of sampling as the researcher does not have to go out of their way to find participants which could be very costly.

One disadvantage of snowball sampling is that the sample is very unlikely to be representative of the target population. This is because the people in the sample are likely to be very similar. They would be likely to know each other and may even be friends and therefore have similar characteristics. This would mean that it would be very difficult to generalise and apply the findings to the rest of the population.

Snowball sampling is a way researchers select their participants through people who know each other. It is a very quick and inexpensive method of obtaining a sample.

A disadvantage of snowball sampling would be that it isn’t representative of the whole population. It is very likely that if a male participant is asked to refer a friend to the study, he will refer a male. This could affect the study as the researcher will only have one gender to study and won’t be able to generalise the findings. Lastly, this method of sampling participants may alter the results. For example, they may tell their friends to give specific examples to the researcher. This will then result in low validity.