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Recent Comments
- Re: Sampling Strategy Online Forum
By: Thomas
Date: Apr 26, 2006 11:42 AM - Re: Sampling Strategy Online Forum
By: Ken
Date: Apr 26, 2006 10:53 AM - Re: Sampling Strategy Online Forum
By: Brandsearch.org
Date: Apr 26, 2006 9:50 AM
Notification
« John Casti "Why the Future Happens: Socionomics and the Science of Surprise" | Main | Who votes for whom? - Voting patterns in the US senate »
25 April 2006
Sampling Strategy Online Forum
Hey there,
I am currently pre-testing an online survey, which I would like to launch in a couple of weeks.
However, the issue I am still struggling with is the sampling strategy. Let me briefly give you some background.
± My research objective is to identify information and advice networks in the online community. Besides a set of demographic/control questions, I ask the respondents to identify their three most important online community contacts (e.g., who comes to you to ask for information/advice AND whom do you turn to to ask for information/advice)
± The community has more than 80,000 registered users. However, the percentage of the really active members is assumed to be far below the latter figure (no clear figures exist). Furthermore, users of the community reported multiple identities of single users (several cases are known, where one user utilizes several aliases)
± There is – currently – not technically feasible/easy way of extracting a list of the most active network members, which might define the sample size for the survey (besides going on the website and manually scan through the forums etc).
± I originally planned to announce the survey and post the link to the survey on the homepage of the forum instead of sending the survey link to each member individually.
The question(s) I thus have is/are:
± How have other researchers solved the sampling issue in a similar type of situation?
± Have other studies tried to identify information and advice network with an ego-sampling strategy, where the exact sample size wasn’t known ex-ante? If yes, did they succeed or fail?
± What are the most relevant/important papers to look at with respect to sampling strategy/research methods of online surveys in online communities?
What do you think? Do you have any ideas?
Posted by Thomas Langenberg at April 25, 2006 12:32 AM
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Comments
I have a friend sociologist contact faces the same problems as you do. In this particular case do you have any particular definition of the “most active user�? Everything hinges on them, but how can you define them?!
Posted by: Brandsearch.org at April 26, 2006 9:50 AM
Thomas, my guess is that study of "online communities" is a recent enough phenomenon that little has been published specifically on these methodological questions.
Ove Frank has written on network sampling; you may find his work useful, though your problem seems somewhat unique. If I understand correctly, you're trying to identify the size of a subpopulation, filtered by degree, where the total population is known. Frank's work focuses more on estimating total populations based on samples.
But I'm not convinced that a technical solution is not possible. My guess is that the html for these forums includes some form of tagging to identify users, such as:
USER said:
With such tags, identifying all of the unique users (and the number of times they post in a given thread) is a relatively trivial programming task. You may even be able to develop a couple of Word or Excel macros to do the job.
Posted by: Ken at April 26, 2006 10:53 AM
Re Brandsearch.org:
I do not look for the most active user, so that is why I haven't thought too much about that. However, one might check the statistics the online communities do (or do not) provide.
In my case, you can identify the most active user by checking the number of posts, the number of pictures, or the number of videos posted.
I also think that Ken's ideas of doing some coding sounds also quite feasible.
Re Ken:
Thanks a lot for the comment. I agree that with respect to online community sampling there is still some open space left to contribute.
In my research I have basically two issues:
(1) There are probably many more registered users than active users, which leads me to the question: How do I figure them out effectively?
(2) Depending on (1), should I go for a complete community sample (define the sample size first and then send out the survey) or should I rather go for snowball sampling in order to "explore" the active part of the community.
With respect to coding you are very right. A technical solution to those issues shouldn't be so difficult. However, before going into coding, I was just checking what other options are available.
Best,
Thomas
Posted by: Thomas at April 26, 2006 11:42 AM