Sampling in Qualitative Research Transcript

This video is about sampling specifically for qualitative research. Remembering that qualitative research is really focused on words and depth of knowledge, trying to gain as much depth into a topic as possible. Your sample for qualitative research is usually purposive. Remember that that means that you’re selecting a specific group of people for a specific purpose.

If your qualitative research, you want to talk to Americans that have moved to China to teach, then you will purposely only select those people to be able to interview. This will give you that depth of knowledge. You’ll be able to draw from those people’s experiences to get the data you need for your qualitative research.

This slide shows you the different types of purposive sampling techniques, and there are quite a few of them. But you have to think about how you’re doing these sampling techniques, because this needs to be part of your methods of your research and something that you think about before you get started.

This is for qualitative research. You want to know which of these sampling techniques is going to get you the people or the participants or the cases that will give you the most in depth knowledge of the topic that you’re studying. And so there’s a number of different ways to do this. It would be really good to study this slide and even make sure to put all of these in your notes, because these are really important to know and understand at the beginning of qualitative research.