Snowball sampling

The snowball selection is a special sampling methods in the social sciences.

It is used if statements to be made on very specific populations. It is used to find participants in numerically very small and hard to reach groups such as drug users, gamblers or experts of a very small subject area. A person in such a group, ie an element of the population that participated in the survey, the questionnaires are to other people in their network further or mediated participation in the survey. Although the results of such a selection process can not be generalized, but it allows the first access to such a group.

The method offers a simple and cost-effective access to groups of people who are not reached sufficient for a random sample. In addition to the lack of representativeness, there are both practical problems and privacy issues, as names and contact details must be saved.