Discusses the dangers of drawing inferences from small samples of data, such as is typically done in qualitative research projects. The problem of ensuring representativeness is discussed: the dangers of convenience samples and the value of purposive sampling. Four ‘rules of thumb’ are proposed for inferences that may be safely drawn from small samples (30 or less), when one is satisfied that they are representative.
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Bock et al. (2002) studied this question.
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