[Air-l] Using LinkedIn for survey sample

[elena at monmouth.com]

Thanks Elijah... I really appreciate your thoughts. 

I did some further research that might help others in the future.

I was considering asking members of the entire (or possibly just my own) 
LinkedIn network to complete an online survey. I don't think this would 
entail any programming (beyond the survey itself). 

LinkedIn has a Question/Answer area and I found previous requests for 
survey participants for dissertation studies (one made reference to 
their IRB). However, when I look at the intended use of the area, this 
type of request doesn't seem to fit (but the previous requests were not 
flagged for improper use). I would be a little hesitant given this.

I think the self-selection issue may be the most concerning of all as 
the membership appear to be biased in favor of executives, entrepenuers, 
and people who are looking for work (or recruiting for jobs). I would 
need a more balanced sample requiring current employment by an 
organzation at various levels.

As far as sampling... in I/O Psychology I've noticed that many 
dissertations (and published studies) use non-experimental designs and 
convenience samples. But I'm being stubborn and wondering if I couldn't  
figure out a way to get a better sample. I'll have to talk to my 
chairperson and get his thoughts. 

In the end, because my 2nd degree network has thousands of people (not 
to mention the 11 million LinkedIn claims), I found the idea intriquing 
and wondered if anyone had experience with it (or had discounted it). 
This might be outside the realm of the aoir group, as I would not be 
studying the network itself (but I'm actually not sure about this).

Thanks again for your time!

Elena


> 
> > Subject: [Air-l] Using LinkedIn for survey sample
> > 
> > Has anyone recruited survey participants from a social network 
(e.g., 
> > LinkedIn)? I'm looking at recruitment possibilites for a 
dissertation on 
> > organizational behavior (motivation to lead and moral philosophy). 
It 
> > occurred to me that LinkedIn might be a good resource for a sample 
of 
> > professionals, but I'm not sure of the privacy/ethical aspect. Any 
> > thoughts or experiences?
> 
> less from the privacy/ethical aspect, but more from the practical 
> aspect...
> 
> 1) does LinkedIn's terms of service (TOS) allow you to use their data 
in
>     this fashion?  Your IRB should probably study that document 
carefully
>     as part of your project approval...
> 
> 2) LinkedIn is somewhat self-selecting - in that you get a very 
particular
>     set of folks, with a particular set of goals, signing up for it.
> 
> 3) difficulty of accounting for bias in your sample.  how're you going 
to
>     explain your sampling strategy, and what defenses will you use in
>     discussing it with people who care about that sort of thing?
> 
> 4) data collection issues - how're you going to extract this data that 
you
>     want, and where're you going to stick it?  IIRC LinkedIn doesn't 
have
>     an API as such, and so hiring a programmer to write a cool little
>     crawler for it in an afternoon is a pretty substantial investment 
of
>     time, energy, and dollars.
> 
> 5) can you really get at organizational structures from the (very
>     limited, in terms of information available at linkedin.com...) data
>     available on the folks that you sample out?
> 
> 
> Anyway... these are the things that come to mind fairly immediately. 
> There's research out there about sampling from incomplete networks; 
some 
> of that should prove most instructive as you work out your ideas...
> 
> --elijah
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