Social research: Researchers in this field use snowball sampling to gather as many participants as possible to gain information about a population. For example, researchers may use snowball sampling to study homeless populations.
Usage with Example
Mentioned below are some examples where you can use the idiom snowball effect: This decision has had a snowball effect on public service. A bunch of people were enraged at the political situation. It snowballed, and many people ended up participating in street protests.
Snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling method where new units are recruited by other units to form part of the sample. Snowball sampling can be a useful way to conduct research about people with specific traits who might otherwise be difficult to identify (e.g., people with a rare disease).
Using snowball sampling, instead, a small number of index individuals who were known to be infected are asked to identify contacts during their potentially infectious period. These contacts are tested and asked whether they have experienced the symptom. The seropositive contacts form the sample.
Therefore, the scenario that best describes snowball sampling is: "Researchers recruit initial participants to be in a study, then ask them to recruit other people to participate in the study."
An Example of Judgment Sampling
A group of researchers is interested in learning if the reason why people wear eyeglasses is to read books. Common sense tells us that the efforts of the research group should be focused entirely on people that indeed wear eyeglasses. This process is judgment sampling in action.
The Snowball Effect is a psychological term that explains how small actions at the beginning can cause bigger and bigger actions ultimately resulting in a huge change. It's a bit like the idea that a small snowball or pebble rolling down from the top of a mountain can end up causing an avalanche.
Snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling method. Unlike probability sampling (which involves some form of random selection), the initial individuals selected to be studied are the ones who recruit new participants.
The "snowball method," simply put, means paying off the smallest of all your loans as quickly as possible. Once that debt is paid, you take the money you were putting toward that payment and roll it onto the next-smallest debt owed. Ideally, this process would continue until all accounts are paid off.
The snowball effect is a psychological term that explains how small actions can cause bigger and bigger actions, ultimately resulting in a big impact. Imagine a snowball that is rolling down a snow-covered hill. It starts small, but as it gathers more momentum, it picks up more snow, making it larger and larger.
He is used by Napoleon as a scapegoat. - anything that goes wrong on the farm is blamed on him. Napoleon also convinces the animals that Snowball was never brave during the battle and was actually on Mr Jones' side.
According to Cambridge Dictionary, a snowball effect is “a situation in which something increases in size or importance at a faster and faster rate.” You've surely heard examples of this, from news stories about pay-it-forward acts of goodwill to the meteoric rise of Bernie-Sanders-at-the-inauguration memes.
Pros and Cons:
Non-random: A snowball sample will likely provide results that are hard to generalize beyond the sample studied. Slow: Because snowball sampling relies on each participant to recommend others, the data collection process is typically slow when compared to other methods.
Systematic sampling technique is the technique which is generally followed when the population is finite.
The researcher starts with a small group of people who have been diagnosed with the rare disease. They ask these people if they know anyone else with the same condition. Each person recommends others they know, and this chain continues until the researcher has enough participants.
A snowball effect is a process that starts from an initial state of small significance and builds upon itself (an exacerbating feedback), becoming larger (graver, more serious), and also perhaps potentially more dangerous or disastrous (a vicious circle), though it might be beneficial instead (a virtuous circle).
The city hopes that these improvements will have a snowball effect and spur private investment in the community.
The major ethical issue is that the first subject may be divulging information about other people that they would prefer to be kept confidential. And it is especially problematic when the referring individual is a person of authority in the community.
Types of snowball sampling
There are different ways to go about obtaining a snowball sample. You can use the linear approach, the exponential non-discriminative approach, or the exponential discriminative sampling approach. These options depend on your research strategy.
To create a snowball sample, there are two steps: (a) trying to identify one or more units in the desired population; and (b) using these units to find further units and so on until the sample size is met.
Simple random sampling is a type of probability sampling in which the researcher randomly selects a subset of participants from a population. Each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected. Data is then collected from as large a percentage as possible of this random subset.
Although judgmental sampling provides certain benefits, it has drawbacks, like sampling bias and a limited generalization capacity. As a result, researchers should carefully consider whether it is appropriate for their study when they decide to use this sampling technique.
Generally, a sample size of 30 individuals is often considered sufficient for qualitative research, although larger sample sizes of 100 or more may be needed in some cases.