[Air-L] Sampling and recruiting in Social Networking Services

[Alexander Semenov]

Thanks a lot! Perhaps this article contain some further references.

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Fred Stutzman
Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 4:30 PM
To: Monica Barratt
Cc: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Sampling and recruiting in Social Networking Services

The only article I've seen out of a methods journal that deals with  
this directly appeared recently:

Ferguson, D. A.  (2009).  Name-Based Cluster Sampling.  Sociological  
Methods & Research, 37(4), 590-598.

Drawing on memory, most of the within-SNS sampling I've seen, for  
small sample studies, uses either snowball or invitation sampling.   
I've also seen use of advertising (both through paid placement and ad  
hoc methods - groups, reposting of solicitation).  For large-scale  
samples, I've seen both randomized and targeted crawling of a SNS.   
Mike Thelwall's papers on Myspace provide a good example.

Notably, most of the medium-sized samples involve extra-SNS  
solicitation (generally some sort of list-based sample).  This is  
mainly used for survey research.



On Jun 18, 2009, at 12:05 AM, Monica Barratt wrote:

> Did you ever get a response to this? I'm also interested.
>
> I'm writing up my experiences of recruiting for research using online
> bulletin board / forums. I also used Facebook but not extensively. I  
> imagine
> there would be some interesting methodological and ethical questions  
> to
> consider through these modes of recruitment.
>
> Monica
>
> 2009/2/6 Alexander Semenov <semenoffalex at googlemail.com>
>
>> Hello everybody,
>> I'm interested in any information about sampling and recruiting  
>> people in
>> SNS to participate in any kind of online surveys, panels,  
>> questionnaires
>> etc. After some googling I've found only several blog postings,  
>> like this
>> ones:
>>
>>
http://kurtisrandom.blogspot.com/2007/11/sampling-massive-online-social-netw
orks.html
>>
>>
http://vannevarvision.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/review-analysis-of-topologica
l-characteristics-of-huge-online-social-networking-services/
>>
>>
http://researchreinvented.blogspot.com/2007/12/recruiting-using-social-netwo
rks.html
>> But I wonder whether there are any "serious" articles on the  
>> question?
>> Thanks in advance.
>> Alexander Semenov.
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--
Fred Stutzman
Ph.D. Student and Teaching Fellow
School of Information and Library Science, UNC-Chapel Hill
fred at fredstutzman.com | (919) 260-8508 | http://fredstutzman.com/

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