Snowball Sampling Dissertation

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Their comments provided the authors with invaluable feedback on the design of and issues with the studies.

Also, messages published on the project's page attracted considerable attention — in a few hours, it was possible to recruit tens of thousands of users to participate in a new questionnaire or experiment.

Facebook profile information includes self-reported information (such as schools attended, current workplace, age and gender); traces of behavior (such as status updates or likes); and data contributed by others (such as photo tags or comments on a user's wall).

These data can be recorded retrospectively and thus help researchers to address the shortcomings of participants' memories and biases.

Access to the large and diverse samples offered by Facebook could help to address a major challenge in social science: its overreliance on samples that are relatively small, student and WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic).

Furthermore, Facebook can be used to circumvent the limitations of self-reports and laboratory-based studies by providing access to records of actual behavior expressed in a natural environment.A look at how to recruit participants using Facebook — and the ethical concerns that come with social media research. 3 Print version: page 70 "CE Corner" is a continuing education article offered by the APA Office of CE in Psychology. Gosling, Ph D, Vesselin Popov and David Stillwell, Ph D March 2016, Vol 47, No.(The size and diversity of the Facebook population can certainly help to minimize this disadvantage; given enough participants, the representativeness of the population can be improved by weighting.) An effective alternative to snowball sampling is offered by targeted advertising.The Facebook advertising platform can be used to target audiences defined by a wide range of preferences (such as liking "getting up early in the morning"); behaviors (liking "running"); and demographic variables including location, education, language, political views, ethnicity, sexual orientation, income and many more.Also, while some researchers are concerned by the risk of participants using fake Facebook profiles to join the study, this is rarely the case and such profiles are relatively easy to detect.For example, real users accumulate their friends and likes over time, whereas fake profiles are likely to be populated with likes and friends in a single burst of activity.One of the downsides is that the first participants are likely to disproportionately affect the composition of the sample, since people tend to interact with those similar to themselves.Furthermore, people with many friends are more likely to be recruited into the sample.This approach can be used to obtain representative samples or reach "rare" participants, such as those stigmatized in the offline world or those who are hesitant to meet researchers face-to-face.Research shows that Facebook advertising reduces the costs of targeted participant recruitment.