Explicaciones sobre la relacion entre consumo de cannabis y esquizofrenia

Snowball sampling is perhaps the most used method of sampling in qualitative research and may be the best sampling technique to use in order to locate participants with certain specific attributes necessary for the study (Berg 2009, Noy 2008). It is of particular interest in exploratory research where there is an unrepresented, inaccessible, hard-to-reach or hard to involve population, or groups located outside mainstream social research such as the holiday representatives (Atkinson and Flint 2001, Baltar and Brunet 2012, Browne 2005).

The researcher makes contact with a small group of people relevant to the research who will be asked for referrals from other people who have the same characteristics and can take part in the study (Bryman and Bell 2011). It allows respondents to be recruited from information provided by initial respondents (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill 2012). Referrals made by acquaintances will increase trust in the researcher and it will influence the respondents to discuss the subject matter more openly and provide rich in-depth data (Atkinson and Flint 2001). The researcher could have asked for the assistance of the tour operators to get access to participants. However, it was decided not to. Wong and Wang (2009) had a similar approach in their study of EL, to reassure their respondents that their comments are confidential. For this study, the researcher also believed that contacting the respondents directly would encourage confidentiality and

90

consequently increase the trustworthiness of the data. The investigator knew that the participants would be more open in their interviews. If the tour operators would have been involved, then the participants would have worried that the employers would know what they said and would conceal certain information. Therefore, the interviewees did feel that they could discuss freely about the issues and the more negative aspects of their job as they trusted the researcher and did not feel constrained to talk about their true feelings or opinions. Thus, this snowball sampling was successful in getting respondents who helped produce very rich data. Shani et al. (2014, p.153) state in relation to their study on EL, that this technique 'can […] be used to provide a researcher with respondents who are willing to elaborate on personal feelings and behaviours at their workplace’.

One issue with this sampling strategy is making initial contact (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill 2012). For this thesis, the initial participants were recruited through the researchers' personal networks. As Table 5 shows, by asking friends and acquaintances the researcher managed to conduct 8 interviews. The researcher encountered problems in terms of initial trust as many other potential participants who were referred, declined to take part in the research.

Table 5: Participant numbers sampling

Channel Contacts/ Participants

Personal Networks 8 Participants

LinkedIn 4 Initial contacts then 7 referrals= 11 Participants

Facebook 0 Participants

Shuspace 1 initial contact then 1 referral= 2 Participants

Another limitation of this sampling technique is the collection of biased data as the respondents were more likely to identify further potential respondents who are similar to themselves and who would give similar answers (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill 2012, Bhutta 2012). According to Atkinson and Flint (2001) larger sample sizes may reduce bias. Therefore, the researcher felt that conducting 21 interviews helped achieve this aspect. However, the researcher had difficulty in getting enough participants through personal networks so used snowball sampling through social networking sites as seen in Table 5. This sampling technique was not initially considered for this study.

91

3.6.1.1 Snowball sampling using social networking sites

Snowball sampling using social networking sites was also used to recruit participants for this study. Social networking sites 'offer new ways for researchers to conduct studies quickly, cheaply, and single-handedly—especially when seeking to construct ‘‘snowball’’ samples for exploratory work' (Bhutta 2012, p. 1). Social networking sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn can therefore be effective tools, for reaching some hidden populations/initial targeting of subjects, to recruit a larger number of potential research respondents/participants and thus improve the response rate (Baltar and Brunet 2012, Bhutta 2012). Therefore, it is a very useful recruitment method which, although has been largely used in quantitative research for distributing surveys, can also benefit qualitative research (Baltar and Brunet 2012, Bhutta 2012, Baker 2013). Another advantage of using social media for snowballing, also known as virtual snowball sampling, is the fact that it minimises the bias of the data. As Baltar and Brunet state (2012, p.69):

Traditional snowball sampling, as it was previously presented, can be seen as a biased sampling technique because it is not random. However, virtual networks incorporate random elements (the random selection of the virtual groups, the contact to every member inside them, etc.) to be considered in the analysis of representation bias.

This present study is exploratory in nature. The researcher decided not to recruit participants through the tour operators which made the holiday representatives a hard-to-reach population. Therefore, the researcher used social networks ‘as channels for recruitment which can be an advantage to study topics with barriers of access’ (Baltar and Brunet 2012, p. 71) such as the holiday representatives’ work experiences. As seen in Table 5, both Facebook and LinkedIn were considered for recruiting respondents in this way.

Bhutta (2012) argues that Facebook can be of very good use in sampling because of its size, features and continuing growth which is linked with cost and time savings in relation to research. However, using Facebook did not prove to be successful for this study. Bhutta (2012, p.7) states that:

Another Facebook feature that is relevant to constructing snowball samples is the Facebook group. Users can create new

92

groups or join existing groups based on anything, ranging from specific interests to special events or shared workplaces […]. There is no monetary cost to joining a group or creating a group […]. Group administrators control the content and the membership of the group. Among other things they decide whether a group is ‘‘open’’ (anyone can join and invite anyone else to join), ‘‘closed’’ (administrators must approve requests of non-members who desire to join the group), or ‘‘secret’’ (membership is by invitation only). Administrators also have the ability to send mass messages to all group members in groups that do not exceed 5,000 members.

Therefore, for this study the researcher looked for different groups of holiday representatives on Facebook. Baltar and Brunet (2012) mention that when trying to contact groups the best person to email is the administrator of the group. Indeed, the researcher emailed the gatekeepers of these ‘closed groups’, but did not receive a response. Therefore, the researcher did not manage to arrange any interviews using Facebook. This might have been the case due to the more informal nature of this social network site and the inability to establish trust between the researcher and the respondents. Perhaps this happened because the message was seen as spam by the group administrators which reduced the level of participation (Baltar and Brunet 2012). Also in community settings such as the closed group on Facebook, the researcher would be seen as an intruder (Gray 2014). Thus, the administrators might have found the emails sent over Facebook as intrusive and thus decided not to respond.

LinkedIn is a platform which connects professionals and can be used for research purposes (Gray 2014). LinkedIn proved to be successful in reaching potential participants through snowball sampling. When searching people on LinkedIn it shows different levels of connections, 1st_{, 2}nd_{, 3}rd _{+ everyone else that a member}

can use to refine the search. The researcher searched for potential respondents in this way. More specifically connections at different levels that had previous experience as holiday representatives using specific search terms which will not be mentioned for ethical considerations. The researcher allowed the profile to be public in order to increase trust for potential participants who could see that it was a doctoral researcher studying the EL of holiday representatives. Responses were received from persons that were contacted and the investigator felt that this was because they could see the profile unlike Facebook and the fact that LinkedIn

93

is for professionals. The participants were approached in a friendly manner and personalised messages were sent which consisted of the participant information sheet which is presented in Appendix 3. Some declined to take part whilst others did not reply to the messages. However, overall snowball sampling through LinkedIn was successful as 4 respondents referred others. In total 11 interviews were arranged and as a result, this sampling strategy was successful.