Snowball sampling

Submitted by adminnwkdocume… on Wed, 06/19/2024 - 14:40

Snowball sampling is a sampling technique that can be used to obtain additional respondents from the respondents' circle of acquaintances.

Example: In step 1, we have one interviewee. This person names 4 people. These 4 people then also take part in the survey (step 2) and name a further 8 people in total. These 8 people are then also interviewed (step 3). With the help of these 8 people, a further 13 people are interviewed (step 4).

Snowball sampling and number of actors for each step

 

 

How do I set up snowball sampling in MyNetworkmap?

 

We need an namegenerator element for the collection of the alteri and a nameinterpretator element for the e-mail addresses of the alteri.

For example:

Survey configuration example for snowball sampling

You can find the snowball element in the element list:

menu snowball element

The form for the snowball element could be filled out as follows, for example:
 

Snowball element example

Alteri attribute containting the email: Please select the attribute whose attribute value contains the requested e-mail address.

Select the email address to which the snowball email should be sent: Specify the e-mail address to which the e-mails are to be sent here. The email addresses correspond to those of the users who are registered with MyNetworkmap for their organization (see top menue "Organization settings" > "Reserved team accounts and team members").

The text parts with "{....}" are placeholders. For example {ego_placeholder_1} will be replaced with the content of the attribute "name".

The {alteri_placeholder_2} will be replaced by the attribute value "questionnaireLink_examaple" (=personalized link).


Add the Snowball element to the end of the questionnaire. And test your survey:

Example

After clicking on "next", you (or the person you have configured to receive the e-mails) should receive 3 emails with personalized survey links for each alteri.

Example email:
 

Example email for snowball sampling


Here you can see the schematic process using a fictional example of a snowball sampling survey:

 

Snowball sampling workflow and ego centric network analysis with MyNetworkmap