Comment: On the Concept of Snowball Sampling

COMMENT: ON THE CONCEPT OF SNOWBALL SAMPLING Mark S. Handcock* Krista J. Gile † The need for notes by Goodman (2011) and Heckathorn (2011) re- flects a phenomenon in the sociology of science: that multidisciplinary fields tend to produce a plethora of inconsistent terminology. Often the meaning of a term evolves over time, or different terms are used for the same concept. More confusing is the use of the same term for different concepts. As the two notes point out, the term “snowball sampling” suffers from this treatment. The term “snowball sampling” has likely been in informal use for a long time, but it certainly predates Coleman (1958) and Trow (1957). The earliest systematic work dates to the 1940s from the Columbia Bureau of Applied Social Research, led by Paul Lazarsfeld. The bu- reau became interested in the empirical study of personal influence via media (Barton 2001). This led to the consideration of interpersonal en- vironments and to the identification of opinion leaders and followers. However, standard sampling of individuals was regarded as ineffective in studying the relations between opinion leaders and followers as pairs related in this way were seldom both selected in the sample (Lazarsfeld et al. 1944:49–50). To address this, Robert Merton asked individuals in an initial diverse sample to name the people who influenced them. From these, a second wave of influential people were interviewed as a *University of California, Los Angeles University of Massachusetts, Amherst