Sampling Designs in Qualitative Research: Making the Sampling Process More Public

A typology of sampling designs for qualitative researchers is provided, which represents a body of sampling strategies that facilitate credible comparisons of two or more different subgroups that are extracted from the same levels of study.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a typology of sampling designs for qualitative researchers. We introduce the following sampling strategies: (a) parallel sampling designs, which represent a body of sampling strategies that facilitate credible comparisons of two or more different subgroups that are extracted from the same levels of study; (b) nested sampling designs, which are sampling strategies that facilitate credible comparisons of two or more members of the same subgroup, wherein one or more members of the subgroup represent a sub-sample of the full sample; and (c) multilevel sampling designs, which represent sampling strategies that facilitate credible comparisons of two or more subgroups that are extracted from different levels of study.