[Air-L] Text Sample Size?

[S. Courtney Walton]

Hi Karyn,
In addition to the great suggestions you have already received, I wonder in
your literature review might give you a clue as to sample size for your
study? Looking at similar studies, can you get a sense for the number of
blogs you will need? Also, does the theoretical framework itself speak to
this issue?

I'm interested to hear how you progress as I am conducting a related study
of gender and disclosure on microblogs. Using Twitter as the site of study
and a stratified, proportional random sample, my study analyzes
microblogging disclosures made by users across two dimensions -- gender and
identity (parent or professional).


On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 5:29 PM, Karyn Hollis <karyn.hollis at villanova.edu>wrote:

>
>   Hi All--
>   This is a newbie question.  I am planning to do a quantitative data
>   analysis to study blogs for gender differences in CMC.  Are there any
>   rules for the size of samples?  Would comparing male to female blog
>   texts of a total of 50,000 words each be enough to claim statistical
>   significance for any differences I find?
>   Thanks for any advice,
>   Karyn Hollis
>   Villanova University
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>



-- 
Best Regards,

S. Courtney Walton
scw at umail.ucsb.edu
http://www.scourtneywalton.com

MA/PhD Student
Department of Communication
4807 Ellison Hall
University of California, Santa Barbara
93106